Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1957)

spot coverage. KING-TV covers these affairs as if they were in the next ward, and I am offering odds that KING-TV will be the first with a remote from the moon. In any event, they spend money like they are printing it themselves, and I think they are. A year or two ago when Radio KING was covering the Silver Cup hydroplane races in Detroit (we think more about hydroplane racing in Seattle than we do about sex ) , I telephoned a KING commentator there after the race for a Page One eye-witness account of the event. I think this might have been a "first" in newspaper — radio — television relationships (where there is no interlocking ownership ) . Yet we never hesitated to play the interview because the KING man is popular both on radio and television, is highly regarded throughout the area, and his comments were news. There was a disastrous transit strike in Seattle during the Christmas shopping season in 1956, and the transit commission and striking employees were making muscles at one another but not saying much for publication. KING-TV invited them to speak their minds before its cameras, and they did, from adjoining studios, and the city that night decided who was right and who was wrong. KING-TV regarded this historic telecast as another "public service" but the commission and the drivers had no such high-flown concept of it. They merely considered appearing on KING-TV as the natural and expected thing to do under the circumstances. If the Devil appeared in Seattle on a Sunday morning and demanded equal time, I am certain KING would give it to him. This acceptance of KING ( TV and Radio ) as a community personality and as a community force is the reason, of course, for KING's domination of the local field. Certainly it is why KING-TV is Seattle's first television station when, without a vigorous and inspired operation, it could easily be the second or third. Management has a great deal to do with KING's position here, to be sure, and management's greatest contribution probably has been to let competent, talented people develop in their own way in a team-work pattern. But what is happening at the moment at KING is more significant than that and much more difficult to explain. I think of it in terms of what we know, from a study of journalistic history, has happened from time to time on some of the nation's newspapers. Suddenly — and the catalysts are never quite identifiable — there comes a fusion of mind and effort and a period of intense productivity and brilliant accomplishment which lifts the group far above the ordinary. The people who are a part of it never entirely lose the momentum of it. Great writers, great editors and great personalities have come out of such periods on the Denver Post, the old New York World, the New York Sun, the Atlanta Constitution and many others. ^4 Mr. Goldenson, we probably haven't said quite what KING and KING-TV would like us to say. Around town the people who buy advertising say that KING is not content just to feed off your network and sell time at station-breaks. They supplement network shows with smart film buys, special promotions and service, and with the most aggressive news coverage I have ever seen in the broadcasting and telecasting fields. These promotions range from the slight and the whimsical to the profound and the spectacular, but they all have in common a decidedly professional touch. KING out-promotes every other station in the Pacific Northwest and I suspect that has a bearing on the fact that network shows here get a higher rating than ABC gets in some other areas of equal population. You don't dare not listen to or not watch KING because you'll miss something everyone else in town will be talking about tomorrow. The people in the KINGTV sales department tell me, over coffee, and their eyes shine with the truth like minor prophets, that KING sells schedules and works out campaigns with an advertiser beyond the normal call of duty; they follow through with promotions, market analyses and merchandising and charts and graphs with lines going every whichway, and chalk talks and pep rallies and heaven only knows what else. And they tell me that KING adheres to its published rate card and never gets under the table with anybody, except possibly, in another sense, at Christmas parties and conventions. But these are aspects of KING and KING-TV's operations that I know little about. As a listener and a viewer, I only know that they are nice, resourceful people, vastly entertaining, and that I never know what they will be doing next, and that, like the rest of the people in this area, I turn to them first. cordially, douglass welch The exploits of Douglass Welch as a staff member of The Tacoma News-Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer are legendary. The gifted Douglass Welch is, as well, a master of the humorous short story whose wry wit has enlivened the pages of the Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, McCall's, Esquire, Cue and Coronet. Welch, for a period, made another career out of scorning television. Quite recently he became a fan of KING. FIRST IN SEATTLE ABC Television, Channel 5, 100,000 watts / ABC Radio, 1090 kc, 50,000 watts / TACOMA KING Ask your BLAIR Man ASSOCIATED WITH KGW-TV, KGW RADIO, PORTLAND, OREGON