Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1957)

OPINION tration of newspaper advertisements is presented on a basis directly comparable to the penetration of radio broadcasting. In order for a home to be counted, it is only necessary for one person in that home to have read the advertisement. Naturally, there will be some homes in which more than one person may have seen the same advertisement. This home is counted only once. This procedure is again parallel to the procedure used by Pulse in radio surveys. Radio ratings are also based on home coverage although there is usually more than one listener per home. Inspection of the pages from the Los Angeles dailies used in the survey indicates that large amounts of space are usually necessary for ads to achieve significant ratings — and even large space is no assurance in some cases. A full-page Broadway Department Store ad on the back page of Section I in the Los Angeles Times had a nine rating, which means that 171,000 families read this ad. The base published rate for a one-page ad in the Times is $2,257.00. Divide 171,000 families int© $2,257.00 and the cost per thousand would be $12.61. Let's suppose that the Broadway Store gets a whopping 50% discount from the published rate. The cost per thousand is still over $6.00. A 4.0 rating, on the other hand on a Los Angeles radio station would cost only 52^ c/m; on tv $2 or $3 c/m. At this point the newspaper will remind you that you can only sell one item in a minute ad, while a full page can carry up to 25 items. Granted! But for $2,200.00 you can buy five one-minute announcements at published base rate on each of 13 different stations in Los Angeles, or a total of 65 minutes with 125 rating points instead of only nine points. Let's look at a few [in Los Angeles newspapers]: A DuPont ad [quarter-page in Examiner] cost $46.23 per thousand. Maybe that's why it's using radio in L. A. this year. Surf's 3.2 [with % page in Herald & Express noted by 3.2%] pulled an $11.45 c/m, but Lever has always demanded $1 per thousand out of radio, when measured by the entire population. Another c/m admirer [Colgate in the Herald & Express, noted by 3.0%] paid $21.98. One [Shell quarter-page in Examiner noted by 1.8%] cost $760 or $22.24 per thousand. It is readily apparent that ratings are low and costs per thousand are consequently high. This does not intend to suggest that newspaper advertising has not been successful through the years — just costly! This suggests that similar broadcast ratings, which have also been successful through the years, are tremendously under-priced and represent the best bargain that either a retailer or a national advertiser can lay his hands on. TvB commissioned Pulse to do a study of newspaper readings vs. tv viewing. Random sample personal interviews and the usual day-part reconstruction used in all Pulse studies featured this 600 home study. The week was the week beginning Sept. 5, 1956. It shows the homes occupied with "newspaper-in-use'* and "Tv Sets in Use" by quarter hours during the day. At any time in the 18-hour period — 6 a.m. to 12 midnight — on the average day, one or more members of 8.6% of all U. S. households were reading newspapers in or out of the home, as revealed by quarter-hour averages. The comparable quarter-hour average for tv viewing was 16.5% for all U. S. households. Note that no time after 10 a.m. does newspaper reading ever match viewing. And, in conclusion: (1) The radio industry is not critical of newspapers as an advertising medium, but feels that the use of radio and newspapers together will make for better advertising dollar productivity. ARB studies made among shoppers in department stores show that as many as 50% of the population never read a newspaper. (2) By cutting down the size of the full-page ad to a lesser size, sometimes the actual readership of a newspaper ad increases. The money saved in this manner will enable an advertiser to reach that 50%. (3) That the cost-per-thousand analysis between radio and newspaper shows radio to be the lowest cost-per-thousand medium by an overwhelming margin. (4) When newspaper ads get down to a quarter-page or smaller the readership is very small and in some cases negligible. (5) When the audio versus sight argument occurs every broadcaster can clobber it by giving actual case histories of comparable advertisers who are using his medium successfully. PLAYBACK TV AND CULTURE Robert F. Carney, board chairman, Foote, Cone & Belding, addressing a meeting at Town Hall, Los Angeles, March 5: ANY OF YOU who have seen the calibre of programs broadcast by the BBC would agree that insofar as the quality of the writing, casting, setting and producing is concerned, there is no comparison between it and American television. The reason is that BBC simply does not have the funds to purchase talent in the same way that American producers and broadcasters do. Starting a little over a year ago Great Britain has had both sponsored and unsponsored tv. Preliminary figures show that two-thirds of the people have chosen commercial tv in preference to the BBC. Research conducted in London showed that 86% of the viewers found television advertising interesting and more than 50% were greatly interested. Apparently, far from rebelling against the invasion of their privacy by advertisers, this very literate people welcomes advertising on tv. In the U. S. Meet the Press, Omnibus and Youth Wants to Know, to name just QUOTES WORTH REPEATING a few, are programs with a high educational value. Hallmark Greeting Card Co. introduced Shakespeare to America on a scale which would not have been possible without advertising. I submit that our cultural level is being raised — not debased. TV AND EDUCATION Charles A. Batson, vice president-managing director of WIS-TV Columbia, S. C, and president of the South Carolina Radio & Tv Broadcasters Assn., writing in the February issue of the South Carolina Education News: WE invite you to test yourself and see whether you are making the most of some rare cultural opportunities which are presenting themselves regularly. Here are five of the more interesting offerings of the current season. How many of them did you see? "Man And Superman" (Hallmark Hall of Fame, NBC-TV), Amahl and the Night Visitors (NBC-TV), At Year's End— 1956 (CBS-TV), "Our Friend the Atom" (Disneyland, ABC-TV), "Festival of Music" (Producers Showcase, NBC-TV) . Audience surveys and the law of av erages predict that you missed a majority of these programs — and that students missed a larger percentage. This points up one crying need: to better and more efficiently utilize the large amount of inspirational and informational programming which is now on the air. In television, as in reading, we must learn to be selective; we must be willing to take the trouble to check advance schedules, to read the notices, to plan our television viewing. SCRIPTURE APPLIES Rev. James E. Wagner, president of the Evangelical and Reformed Church of Lancaster, Pa., speaking at dedication ceremonies of WGAL-TV's new studios Feb. 24: TUCKED DOWN in the last verse of the tenth chapter of Ecclesiastes is the following: "A bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter." That, I should say, is the perfect poetic description of the miracle of wireless communication which came upon us first with the advent of radio and has reached new heights of technical perfection with television. Page 120 • March 18, 1957 Broadcasting • Telecasting