Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

STATIONS AFTER a razzle-dazzle career in sportscasting during which he parlayed major league baseball broadcasts on a single station into a 400-outlet sports network (which folded during longdrawn litigation with the ball clubs over rights and fees), Gordon McLendon today serves as general manager for KLIF Dallas and also keeps a supervisory eye cocked at goings-on at the other McLendon radio stations, KELP El Paso and WRIT Milwaukee. Deciding to major in news as a field in which radio is far superior to television, Mr. McLendon, who is accustomed to controversy, has plunged KLIF into competition with the Dallas dailies, editorially as well as newswise, and the sparks are flying in all directions. Here is his own account of the fracas, excerpted from a talk before the Texas Broadcasters Assn. midwinter meeting at Mc Allen, Tex. [B«T, Feb. 27 J. NEWS: THE ACE UP RADIO'S SLEEVE IT IS OBVIOUS to all by now that in order to survive, radio must offer something which television cannot do, or cannot do as well. One of those things is news. In news, so far tv hasn't been able to pour water out of a boot with the directions printed on the heel. For 20 years or more, radio men have discussed over cocktails radio's vast advantages over newspapers as a news medium. First, radio has an intrinsic time advantage which newspapers cannot duplicate. Radio has an additional advantage in the warmth and emphasis which can be given to news stories by the human voice. Third, radio news has the advantage of economy. Radio needs no linotypers, no proofreaders, no headline writers, no endless supply of newsprint. Your radio newsmen don't have to write out every story they deliver nor do they need to go into the multitudinous details which some newspapers use so often just because they have space they have to fill. So radio needs far fewer men than newspapers. Radio's electronic news plant is economically far more efficient than the bulky, unwicldly, uneconomic newspaper plant. Besides all this, the average metropolitan newspaper reaches only about two-thirds of the homes in the city. Over 95% of these same homes own a radio. Just how much of an advantage can radio have? Yet, even with all these advantages, until the advent of television radio had never seriously challenged newspapers in the news-reporting field. Perhaps it was because until a few years ago there had always been other and easier sources of lucrative programming. But whatever the reason, it was true that in over 30 years commercial radio had done little to increase its stature or take advantage of its innate superiority as a news-reporting medium. When people thought of news, they thought of newspapers, simply because radio had never made any really serious effort to compete in the news field. We at KLIF discussed the possibility of a "newspaper of the air" and proceeded to do something about it. We adopted a slogan of "Tomorrow's Newspaper Now" and proceeded to remove ourselves from competition with television by the very simple alternative of going into competition with newspapers, by becoming a "newspaper of the air." KLIF, and all of our other radio stations, now cover both local and national news events with a thoroughness and verve far beyond anything ever attempted by a station in a market of our size before. We have not exactly put the newspapers out of business yet, and of course never will, but I'm certain that we have reduced their readership. Whenever we find in either of the local newspapers a story of any real local interest which has not appeared on KLIF hours or a full day before, our managing editor's job is in jeopardy. And we do not hesitate to call this coverage to the attention of the public. Several times in each newscast we will say, "Tokyo — here's a story that you won't read in the newspapers until tomorrow," or "Lisbon — another example of how far radio news is ahead of the newspapers." Our news staff at KLIF consists of six men, none of whom have any particular hours, and all of them under the direction of Edd Routt, our managing editor. To function as a "newspaper of the air" we are on the air 24 hours a day and we have three mobile news units, one of them a reserve unit, but two of them roving the city at all hours to report news events direct from the scene. Whenever there's a fire, a murder, an important City Council vote, the announcement of a new building development, whenever the jury is coming in — KLIF's mobile news units are on the spot to report that news direct and we break into whatever program is in progress. Mobile units are not new, but I believe that we were the first station ever to put three of them to such extensive use. It is not at all unusual for us to have a program interrupted three or four times an hour for either mobile news unit reports or beeper telephone interviews. Naturally, this is fast, exciting radio, and the result of it is that you are almost afraid to turn away from the station. When hubby gets home at five-thirty and picks up that newspaper, he's got nothing to tell wifey about because she's heard it all on KLIF during the day and, as a matter of fact, can generally tell him some new developments about most of the stories. Or maybe, and this is happening more every day, hubby has been listening at his office and doesn't bother to read the newspaper when he gets home. We know that these six men — that's our managing editor, two desk men, and three outside leg men — aren't sufficient to do the job we want eventually to do. Eventually, we plan to have eleven men on our news staff — our managing editor and three other desk men, a crime and violence editor, a sports editor, a business and political news editor, a society editor, an editorial writer, an entertainment editor and a local and civic events editor. With that staff, I believe that in Dallas we can offer even more effective competition to either one of the competing dailies. One of our objectives, and I assure you we are achieving it, is to force radio listening by a segment of the population which has got out of the habit of listening. For a long time it discouraged me to go out with a group of my friends and discover that none of them had listened to the radio that day. Or maybe one of them would say, "I only listen to the radio when I'm in my car." That used to drive me crazy. But it doesn't happen much any Page 80 • March 19, 1956 Broadcasting Telecasting