Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1956)

possible only through networking. Networking, in turn, requires interconnection facilities and a program clearance arrangement with stations which is accomplished by option time. Without the network service, television would shrink from a national communications system to a film transmission mechanism, supplemented by locally produced shows. Live programs accounted for 88.1% of the total program hours on the NBC network schedule for the typical week of March 18-24, 1956. By contrast, KTTV's schedule for a similar week consisted of only 9.8% live programming, with an additional 15.9% combined live and film and 74.3 % completely film. The network program service is not only unique in the four broad characteristics just listed, but in its individual elements, which also require the networking procedures which are under attack by the film group. These elements include: (1) A visual news service in which outstanding reporters and analysts collect, present and interpret the news on a nationwide and worldwide basis. To provide this daily news service, which is a basic source of information to the public, NBC has its own news organization with a staff of over 250, including commentators, reporters and cameramen working out of NBC foreign offices in London, Paris, Rome, Bonn, Tokyo, Hongkong, Taipeh, Singapore and Cairo. This news organization shoots almost 2.5 million feet of news film a year. The annual cost of this news operation exceeds $3 million. Film syndicators provide no such service to stations and the public. (2) Coverage of special events of national importance. Networks are the only program organizations which, as part of their overall service, undertake to furnish stations with live coverage of important public events such as the political conventions and national election campaigns, addresses by the President and national leaders, the presidential inauguration, and congressional hearings; or with comprehensive live sports coverage of leading sports events, including the World Series, the major football classics, championship fights, the principal golf matches and tennis tournaments. (3) Significant cultural and public affairs presentations on a national basis, for which networks assume the costs and furnish to stations whether or not they are sponsored. As distinguished from film syndicators, networks furnish stations with programming produced at the networks' cost as a public service, such as nationally broadcast religious series. Other examples in the field of information and culture are series like The Search or Adventure on CBS; NBC's Elder Wise Men series — which has brought a nationwide audience face-to-face with such outstanding personages as Herbert Hoover, Robert Frost, Wanda Landowska, Pablo Casals, Nehru, Sean O'Casey, Bertrand Russell; or the NBC Opera Theater series, including original works specially commissioned by NBC. The Opera Theater has cost the network over $2.5 million to date in presenting opera performances on television without a sponsor. (4) The innovation of new program forms and techniques which have tremendously enlarged the value of television to the public. Film syndicators are program merchants, not program experimenters. Their product falls largely into the standardized pattern of the half-hour drama, adventure, situation comedy or western series. While this type of program has a place in the television service — and is included as one of many elements in the network schedule — it must be recognized that the principal program experimentation and development in television — the type of presentations which have opened new and broader horizons for the medium — have come from the networks, which have undertaken the risks and costs of program innovation. To cite a few examples from the NBC service: The Spectaculars. This program form did not exist in television until it was created by NBC in 1954. It consists of 90-minute live special entertainment events, with each series scheduled once every four weeks, so that the individual productions can have the benefit of maximum creative attention, long and thorough preparation and the participation of outstanding talent who are only occasionally available. The results have been such presentations as Sadler's Wells Ballet in "The Sleeping Beauty"; Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shew" and Shaw's "Devil's Disciple," both with Maurice Moore Answers Bricker, Repeats Blast at Networks ANSWERS by Richard A. Moore, KTTV (TV) Los Angeles, to questions asked by Sen. John W. Bricker (R-Ohio) during Mr. Moore's testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee March 26 [B«T, April 2] have been submitted. Taking 45 typed pages to answer 50 questions asked by Sen. Bricker sympathetic to Mr. Moore's testimony charging tv networks' "time option" and "must buy" policies violate antitrust laws, the KTTV president described KTTV's former relations with CBS and elaborated on his March 26 testimony. Mr. Moore said network affiliates can't individualize programs for fear of losing affiliation; option time has helped CBS and NBC get an edge on ABC through shortage of outlets; affiliates telecast virtually 100% of network programs; networks profit on purchase-and-resale of shows; national advertisers have no alternative but to deal with networks; same for independent producers; networks are timebrokers for sale of time to stations they don't own, getting up to 70% commission. He added that station's local programming responsibilities are pre-empted by distant network executives; advertising agencies could not gain the same powers networks now have if "option time" and "must buys" were eliminated, and that this elimination would precipitate an "upward spiral" of program quality; it might also help uhf in making more programming available; if new regulations would make possible enough quality programs, small-market stations might exist without network through lower costs. If program sources had equal access to distribution, existing denial of programs to certain stations would be overcome, Mr. Moore said. He doubted elimination of "option time" and "must buys" would lead to government rate regulation for stations, since rates are imposed where there is protection from competition, while the Moore proposals would introduce free competition. Evans; "Heidi," "Babes in Toyland," and "Alice in Wonderland"; Robert Sherwood's "Petrified Forest"; "Cyrano de Bergerac"; Katharine Cornell in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," and Mary Martin in "Peter Pan." NBC has thus far presented about 70 major productions of this type. They have given the whole television medium a broadened scope and value. The Telementaries. This is another form developed by the networks. Victory At Sea, a 26-episode history of the Navy, with a speciallycommissioned symphonic score by Richard Rodgers, is one example. Others are the treatments in depth of a given subject like "Three, Two, One, Zero," on the atomic bomb; "Nightmare In Red," a history and analysis of Russian communism; "Assignment India," and the "Twisted Cross," which documented the rise and fall of Nazi dictatorship — major contributions to public informattion, furnished in many cases on an unsponsored basis, at NBC's cost. The Network Service Shows. Network program series like Home and Today, each costing several million dollars a year, would not have been developed by any other program source and scarcely could be produced by any organization other than a national network. Home, an hour-long program each weekday, presents national authorities dealing with homemaking, health news, child care, fashions, family management and new products. Today, scheduled two hours daily, five days a week, is a more general news and information show, keeping viewers current on national and international affairs and the forthcoming events of the day; reviewing books, plays and movies, and presenting the leading personalities of our time. Wide Wide World. This novel program series takes a nation-wide audience around the country — and to neighboring countries — with live cameras, so that viewers can look in on America's ways of life and activities while they are happening. A single program, like the one of May 13, 1956, covering the U. S. Armed Forces, takes several months of planning and preparation; involves the participation of a number of affiliated stations in different parts of the United States; requires as many as 75 live television cameras, and costs as much as $150,000. It is possible only with live networking. The Structure of Network Programming. The foregoing has dealt with special characteristics of network programming from the point of view of content. It is similarly distinctive in its structure. This structure — a schedule of consecutive programs related to each other in a planned sequence — also makes option time arrangements necessary, so that the values of the program structure can be preserved — subject to any station's veto of any program in its market — as it is broadcast nationally over multiple outlets. The planning of the network program structure has as its objective the scheduling in each period of the type of program — and the particular program within the general type — which will be most effective, in the light of the programs which precede and follow it, the competing programs of other networks, and the type of audience available at the time. Sources and Responsibility for Network Programming. The decision on what specific programs shall go into which time periods programmed by the network cannot be delegated to the many different program sources on which the network draws. To do so would turn over to others, who have an individual interest only in a particular program or time period, the responsibility for organizing the overall network schedule. Although the network must itself decide on the development, selection and organization of its program structure, many of its programs come from organizations and individuals outside the network itself. This is desirable, in order that a network service, running over 80 hours a week of widely diversified programming, will have the benefit of as many different creative talents as possible. In NBC's case, more than half of the programs in its schedule are produced by a variety of outside organizations. It is obvious, as Mr. Moore states, that there may be programs not on the air, which, if given Broadcasting • Telecasting May 28, 1956 • Page 31