Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan - Mar 1951)

Radio & TV — A Modern Day Barker 'rtytiMyA, S.^.O. SiOM& ^(n 7^e 'Ice ^oUte* ; r WAS no folly back in 1938 when three young producers nder names of Shipstads & Johnson decided to test the sellig power of radio in building the box office for their Ice ollies. They now consider it one of their isest investments. For the modest £!,000 they allotted for a local spot .: mouncement campaign on Los ngeles area stations to suppleent other advertising media ■ought phenomenal results for the uring musical revue on ice. A rtual nightly sell-out resulted iring the Ice Follies brief showj^g in Los Angeles. Now playing 20 cities from coast coast, records show that more jian 30 million persons have at nded performances in the 15 ars it has been in existence. Ift ' Average annual expenditures for vj'adio and TV spots has been esti— ated at $300,000. The Shipstads & Johnson Ice ollies had been in operation but vo years when its first appearance . as made in Los Angeles. It had 'aen using what previously had aen normal show business adversing. That included newspapers, Jtdoor, direct mail, publicity and xploitation. 1 Walter McCreery, then an exbutive of Allied Advertising Agents, and now president of Walter u! Mr. McCREERY McCreery Inc., Beverly Hills, Calif, agency, approached the three producer-owners of the ice production — Eddie and Roy Shipstad and Oscar Johnson — with a plan for a saturation spot announcement campaign to supplement, on the local level, the Ice Follies' regular advertising. These progressive minded young men listened and were interested. They saw the potentials of the comparatively new medium. They appropriated the necessary $2,000 to give it a try. Broadcast Formula Draws Crowd Resultant attendance at Ice Follies during the Los Angeles showing was beyond the fondest expectations of the youthful owners. And since then radio has been an integral part in Shipstads & Johnson Ice Follies advertising budgets, both on a national and local level. Live copy was used by staff announcers that first year. Copy slant emphasized the fact that this was an entirely new form of show business. The formula worked, according to Mr. McCreery. Hard-to-sell Angelenos flocked to the box office. And it worked so well that the three producer-owners eyed the plan for use in their cross-country tour. Here though, they came upon a minor obstacle. The planning and actual cost of the advertising budget depended upon each individual arena in which it played. This meant that use of spot radio had to be sold individually to each arena manager. This was no easy task the partners will tell you. This process extended over a period of almost three years, according to Mr. McCreery. At the end of that time almost every arena manager on the 20 city circuit was acutely aware of the importance of spot radio in his local advertising budget. Next step, after radio was in general use in the local campaigns throughout the circuit, was to fill the need for unified, strong-selling material to be used in each city. Transcribed spots, done with top talent and production obviously were the answer to this problem. Here again Mr. McCreery and the agency stepped into the picture and put to work his background in radio which extends back to the early '20s. The first transcribed spots were good ones, station managers throughout the country agreed. Ice Follies was one of the first organizations to make use of name voices and identify them in the body of the spot announcement, Mr. McCreery pointed out. Cream of radio industry talent was used for these transcribed spots. There were Ken Carpenter, Ted Husing, Phil Stewart of the Lady Esther program, Franklin McCormick, Bob Burns, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and a host of others. And that has been policy over the years. Included in the set were 16 different cuts of varying length. They include station breaks, 30second and one minute. Entire series was trade-marked musically by a lilting string arrangement of The Swing Waltz by Josef Strauss. This particular melody has been used to close the first act of every edition of Ice Follies in its 15 years of existence to accompany an exuberant dance on skates. Another problem had to be solved to make those same transcribed spots usable in every city on the circuit. Playing dates, performance time and price scales varied in the different cities. To accommodate these changes, a portion of each transcribed announcement was left open for a live tag, Mr. McCreery explained. A "tag book" accompanied each set of transcriptions. It was for convenience of the arena manager to use in his local campaign. Included in this book was format of Producer-owners of Ice Follies (top to bottom) : Eddie Shipstad, Roy Shipstad and Oscar Johnson. live tags for every possible contingency, Mr. McCreery declared. One illustration of the intense faith those youthful Ice Follies producer-partners have in their radio spot plan was displayed in 1946 prior to show opening in Madison Square Garden, New York. Up to that time, Madison Square Garden, where the ice production plays annually, had never used spot radio to promote any of its attractions, Mr. McCreery said. When approached with the Ice Follies spot plan, Garden officials were dubious. Radio Pur to Test In New York "Maybe it will work in other places, but not in New York," they said. "New York is different." Ice Follies owners, to give their radio spot plan a test in the metropolitan area, agreed to gamble. They underwrote a ten-day $12,000 (Continued on page 4-0) SROADCASTING • Telecasting