Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1957)

OPINION ing coverage of a development in the field of health . . . firstrate plays . . . discussion of public issues . . . the list of good and stimulating program fare is long and growing, and resembles the combined output of book publishers, the theatre, motion pictures and the concert hall. Tv and radio are not in competition with Broadway, Hollywood and Publishers Row. We are partners in contributing to cultural and civic life. Audiences today are not merely willing, but eager to be informed. Our audiences are better educated, more sophisticated and more desirous of knowledge than ever before. I think that we in the tv industry can take a great deal of credit for helping bring this about. But we also must keep pace with the public's growing maturity. Many advertisers are now selling their products through commercials that several years ago would have been considered far too sophisticated for a mass medium. The Piel's beer campaign featuring Bert and Harry, the new Waldo messages for Dodge [B«T, May 6], the commercials produced in modern cartoon technique — all point up advertisers' awareness of the public's growing sophistication. Programming of shows that respect the public's intelligence and curiousity about the world we live in, about art, science, and social relationships, is necessary. Television needs such shows because vast numbers of our viewers want them. We wouldn't be good businessmen or good showmen if we passed by the opportunity to provide such programs. Showman & Journalist: Common Objectives If we are showmen, we are also journalists. There is a thinner line between the showman and the newsman than we sometimes think. Both work to satisfy the same human hunger — curiosity, the need to know, the desire to be there as something happens. If the showman in us is sometimes disappointed in the ratings of a public affairs program, we should remind ourselves that ratings are merely a measure of relative popularity. In the ratings vortex in which we are sometimes drawn, we often forget that what looks like a tiny drop in the Trendex bucket may really be quite a splash! Recently, the Trendex rating of one of our public service shows was a 3.0. Standing all by itself, that was a mighty small figure. But nationally this show reached some 1.5 million homes — some(i 3 million viewers. And that's a sizeable audience compared to thef number who might read an article on the same subject. Of course, we can use more qualitative research on program content — what makes a show of greater appeal to bigger audiences — and these techniques should be applied in greater measure to the so-called public service programs. We must raise the showmanship content of these programs. The heart of the matter is that there should not be a separation between entertainment and information programs. Sponsorship, Public Service Are Compatible Very often what we really mean when we label a program1 public service is that it has no sponsor. See it Now, Navy Log and Air Power, for example, if they had no sponsors, would most certainly be labeled public service programs. Perhaps, the area of public service programming is the laboratory from which many of our best new shows will come. Perhaps John Daly's test kitchens — which are busy concocting nourishing new dishes — will come up with public affairs servings that will be big commercial sellers. But we don't want John to be a salesman; we want him to remain a newsman, a public affairs man. That's his line. We at ABC-TV have reached a new stage in our growth. With men like Robert Eastman, the dynamic new president of our radio network, with men like Ollie Treyz, the very creative head of the tv network, we have the manpower and idea power to make a great forward surge in programming. And because of our growth in coverage and audience popularity, ABC-TV now has the economic basis for more program experimentation, for more shows in John Daly's public affairs area, for the development of more new programs with fresh formats, new talent and personalities. This is one of our chief goals — to cook up the kind of meal that will increasingly whet the public's appetite for new and better programs. As the public demand grows stronger, the networks will provide even greater quantities of this type of program. There will always be the bread-and-butter items, but increasingly there will be the chicken tettrazini of an opera or the delicate pastry of a ballet, and the many other delicacies to delight a palate exposed to many kinds of program cuisine. The true significance of the emergence of ABC-TV is that it gives the public a whole new range. PLAYBACK UNFOUNDED ARGUMENTS JED KOOP, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Assn., speaking May 4 at the annual banquet of the Carolina News Broadcasters. ARGUMENTS advanced by the press [against radio-tv participation in news conferences] are old and specious: the interviewees, they contend, must be protected from their own words; the cameras and microphones get in the way; the reporters do not want to be actors. There is no logical basis for such complaints. Public officials must be responsible for their statements and reporters should not gratuitously censor them. Cameras and microphones need not be obtrusive, as has been demonstrated even in courtrooms. And I do not know one of the 200-odd reporters attending a presidential news conference, for example, who believes he has been turned into an actor because a camera focuses QUOTES WORTH REPEATING on him when he asks Mr. Eisenhower a question. IMMUNITY TO ADS ELLIOTT LEE RICHARDSON, assistant secretary, Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare, speaking April 29 before the San Francisco Mental Health Society on influences that beset people. WE live in an age of high-pressure advertising. The American public is inured to the dramatic claim, the compelling statistic, the cool eyes of the white-jacketed doctor peering from under his head reflector as he issues a warning. . . . It becomes physically impossible for for us to get through a day without bumping into literally dozens of products, all of which are, naturally, the biggest, smoothest, softest, best tasting and least harmful to the fabrics. After a while we develop immunity. Sooner or later . . . [such ads] have no more impact than a softly-settling soap bubble. IDIOTS' LANTERNS CASSANDRA, London Mirror Daily Mirror columnist, whose caustic comments spare few, pens this dim view of television. THE United States and Great Britain between them share 90% of the total number of the world's television sets. America has 39 million tv receivers while we have 5.9 million idiots' lanterns. Lucky countries like Cuba have only 200,000 of the darn things. Even the Soviet Union, which you would have thought turned them out in millions for the happy, goggling natives to worship the myths of Stalin, Malenkov and Kruschev, have only one set for every 250 of the population. The television set links the barbaric illiteracy of the past with the effete illiteracy of the present. Cave drawings and the cathode ray tube have much in common except that the former were done in skill while the latter is perpetrated with ignorance. Page 118 • May 20, 1957 Broadcasting • Telecasting