Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1957)

EDITORIALS Giveaway Inflation TT REQUIRES no special foresight to predict that the giveaway *■ craze on television is about to get out of hand. The success of The $64,000 Question has been overshadowed by the success of Twenty-One. To counterattack, The $64,000 Question has raised its jackpot to $256,000, nearly twice the $129,000 which Charles Van Doren won last week on Twenty-One. For the moment the quarter-million dollars that is Question's new prize is the biggest on the air, but we have no doubt that the producers of other quiz shows are even now seeking the financing to top it. The fact is that despite the lavish money which individual contestants have won, the average, per-week program expense of such shows as Question and Twenty-One is not at all spectacular, by comparison with the costs of ©ther kinds of television programming. The $64,000 Question has given away $1,219,168 in the 88 weeks it has been presented. That averages out to under $14,000 a show. Is there any other program type which could have brought Revlon so big an audience so cheaply? It is for this reason — the promise of high ratings at low perprogram cost — that we confidently, but morosely, predict an increase in the number and munificence of television giveaways. There will be more and bigger giveaways before there are less, but there definitely will be less eventually. To substantiate that last prediction, one needs only to refer to radio of 10 years ago. In 1948, when the radio giveaway craze was at its silliest, at least a million dollars worth of prizes was distributed. In the summer of that year, no fewer than 48 giveaways were regularly scheduled on the radio networks. On so rich a diet, listeners became jaded, and the giveaways virtually disappeared. The same fate awaits the television giveaway — unless, contrary to all programming history in radio and television, the networks resist the urge to try to top the two shows which are now hits by introducing a rash of imitations. Education and Education A NY taxpayer even remotely acquainted with the sensitive art of broadcasting would not have been proud of his duly elected representatives in Congress if he had happened to sit in on the House Interstate Commerce Committee meeting with the FCC last week. The general tenor of interrogation was below that 13-yearold level to which some members of Congress have accused broadcasting of catering. It was quite a revelation to those who were there. Obviously there had been considerable indoctrination on particular subjects, such as the educational reservation matter, deintermixture, and the qualities of uhf versus vhf. But after the parroted questions had been asked there was practically no follow through because the interrogators obviously didn't know where they were headed. Several times members didn't even detect answers that were not responsive. This is a glaring example of the utter lack of education of members of the House on broadcasting matters — unless it is what appears on the screen or comes out of the horn. On the other hand, the questions of educational broadcasting were well-planted — proof that the Joint Council on Educational Television is doing a creditable job of lobbying and thereby of building the case for its own perpetuation through continued endowments from the Ford Foundation. It was the first time in several years that the House Committee had attempted to dig into FCC affairs. The big show has been on the Senate side, where staff experts and a series of teams of informed special counsel have hit pay dirt to the extent of making headlines. After the performance last week, the Senate Committee need not worry about its FCC investigatory laurels. There's no contest. But there is need for concern about the peregrinations of JCET, on both sides of Congress. It has created an aura of sanctity about the educational reservations. The educators obviously contend Page 122 • March 18, 1957 Drawn for BROADCASTING • TELECASTING by Sid HIx "Him? He's the station owner who won all those merchandising awards last year!" that the greedy broadcasters want to divest them of their television heritage and deprive the youth of America of adequate education. Evidently little or nothing has been done to counter this pious, self-serving, wholly fallacious talk. The legislators are not told that the Sixth and Final Report of the FCC adopted on April 14, 1952, and setting aside 242 educational reservations, specifically provided that the educational reservations should be "reviewed" a year later. Next month five years will have elapsed, and there still has been no review. To date, the statistics show that of the 257 reservations (the number was increased after the Sixth Report) a grand total of 24 now are on the air. There are 23 construction permits outstanding and 9 applications pending. That after nearly five years. The question logically arises: How long is a reservation a reservation? The FCC, under the law, has an affirmative duty to allocate available facilities. Each day a tv assignment is not in use is a day gone forever. Section 1 of Title I of the law creating the FCC states that the agency was created "to make available so far as possible, to all of the people of the United States a rapid, efficient, nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communications service. . . ." The FCC, we contend, is derelict as long as it allows valuable channels to go unused in a television economy where scarcity is the major problem. Bandwagon "V[OW that the NARTB is about to become the NAB again, we note with interest that the Canadian Assn. of Radio and Television Broadcasters is considering a change back to just plain Canadian Assn. of Broadcasters. That, as we said in the case of NARTB, is as it should be. "Broadcasting" is all-inclusive. It covers all modes of transmission to the public, whether by sight or sound. The same people, to a large degree, are in both. Substantially the same advertisers buy time through the same agencies for both radio and television broadcasting. And both are governed by the same statutes. The NARTB change isn't automatic. The joint board at its meeting last February unanimously recommended the change, and the matter will be discussed at this fall's regional meetings, after which a referendum ballot will be asked with a view toward reversion by Jan. 1, 1958. It looks from here as if it's all over but the ballot-counting, and the changing of letterheads, insignia, name-plates and calling cards. Broadcasting • Telecasting