Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1957)

Across-the-Board RadioAll Aboard Union Pacific If you're coming or going in Southern California (and most of the area's 7 million usually are) Union Pacific will reach you . . . via radio. UP hits solidly every day at the 99% radio homes and 80% radio-equipped cars (IV4, cars per family!) with a triple punch: 1. MORNING NEWS on KBIG, covering all Southern California from Catalina. 2. CLASSICAL MUSIC evenings on KFAC 3. NIGHT NEWS on KNX-CBS To bolster this year-round schedule, UP buys saturation spots for specific promotions like Vacation Family Plan and inauguration of the "City of Las Vegas". "Practically everyone travels in Southern California," says UP Los Angeles ad manager Paul Beach. "We put a substantial share of our budget in radio because it reaches practically everybody, consistently and economically." Adds Marion Welborn, vice-president, The Caples Company ad agency: "We picked KBIG 3 years ago as a basic for Union Pacific, because its powerful signal gives us coverage of 8 counties at low cost — per — thousand. Results have dictated our renewal for 1957." KBIG shares with two other stations gratification for another "well done" from a contented Southern California Radio client. JOHN POOLE BROADCASTING CO. 6540 Sunset Blvd.. Los Angeles 28, California Telephone: Hollywood 3-3105 Not. Rep. WEED and Company OUR RESPECTS to Robert Francis Hurleigh ALTHOUGH Bob Hurleigh's responsibilities with Mutual have become increasingly administrative, the new MBS national director of news and special events still thinks of himself as a working newsman and still looks forward with excitement to his morning newscast on the network. Mr. Hurleigh's latest move up in the Mutual hierarchy came with the network's shift of its news headquarters from New York to Washington [B«T, March 18], "where the bulk of headline news now originates." He didn't have to move at all physically, for he has headed Mutual's Washington news operations since 1955. The new MBS news chief is one of those broadcast figures who stuck with radio through thick and thin and whose words are being heeded again now that radio's resurgence makes itself felt. The industry as a whole, he believes, "has not yet started to think of radio in specific terms of its importance in the field of information and entertainment." During the advent of tv the executives in radio became the executives in the more lucrative, but also more costly, new medium, he says, and many of them "let radio slide." "Now," the Mutual executive says, "we have to think of radio in news terms — not as competing with tv, but in specializing in what is best for radio, which, he believes, "pre-eminently outdistances tv, day in and day out, in the handling of spot news." Robert Francis Hurleigh entered radio news at 21 after four years successively as usher in Washington's William Fox (now Loew's Capitol) and RKO theatres and as a copyboy on the old Washington Times. Born July 28, 1912, on Maryland's Eastern Shore (Crisfield), he lived with his mother in Baltimore after his father died when he was three. He attended McDonogh Military School, later moving to Washington and going to McKinley High. He began with WOL Washington as a newscaster in 1933, stayed about a year, touched down briefly at WJEJ Hagerstown and WFMD Frederick, both Maryland, then went to WFBR Baltimore in 1935 as news director. There he organized the Radio Correspondents Assn., predecessor of the present Radio-Tv News Directors Assn. and first such group in the broadcast field, becoming its first president. In 1940 he joined the AP's radio subsidiary, then the Press Assn., as an editor and in a few months organized its Central Div. in Chicago as manager in charge of sales and editorial functions. In 1941-42 it was second of the three divisions in sales. He served CBS' WBBM Chicago as commentator from 1942-44, then joined WGN, Mutual outlet there, to reorganize the news department as news director, and became news director of WGN-TV when it went on the air in 1948. He added duties as midwest news chief for MBS in Chicago later that year. Early in 1955, he moved to Washington to head Mutual's news operations in the Nation's Capital. Mutual currently is awaiting an FCC decision in its proposed purchase of WGMS Washington, 5-kw outlet. When and if the Commission approves the sale, which is contested, Mr. Hurleigh would add duties as general manager of the station. BOB Hurleigh has had his own network newscast since 1948, and remembers one exciting experience in 1953 during a strike at WGN by the American Federation of Tv & Radio Artists. He was called upon, as a WGN executive and "as the father of five children," to take over the Johnson Family program, a daily 45-minute show featuring the "home life" of Cliff Johnson, WGN performer, and originating from the Johnson home. Mr. Hurleigh aired his own MBS news program, then with his family switched immediately to the Johnson program, all originating from Mr. Hurleigh's home in Barrington, 35 miles from Chicago. This lasted two weeks and earned not only WGN's gratitude, but a deluge of letters and new listeners to the news show. Co-starring were Mrs. Hurleigh, the former Marjorie Marie Peterson whom he married in Baltimore in 1939, and the rest of the Hurleigh tribe: daughters Maryland, Robin and Jan, now 14, 11 and 5, and sons Bobby and Steven, now 12 and 7. Mr. Hurleigh, who last Saturday was seated as president and executive committee chairman of the Radio & Tv Correspondents Assn., comprising radio-tv newsmen who cover Congress and the White House, at that organization's annual dinner, found he had a lot of other friends when he left Chicago in 1955. The Chicago Press Club, which he helped reactivate in 1949 after it had been inactive 10 years (he browbeat 300 newspaper and radio-tv newsmen into contributing $15 apiece), gave a testimonial dinner when he left. He had served as president. The 1,000 people attending gave him a new Cadillac and a 4x5-foot painting, a duplicate of which now hangs in the club's lobby. It shows a newsboy holding aloft his newspaper, with a radio tower and the Statue of Liberty in the background. Page 24 • March 25, 1957 Broadcasting • Telecasting