Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

EDITORIALS 'In the Public Interest' "~|VrO GROUP has contributed more to Advertising Council cam-! 1 paigns than radio and television." So Thomas D'Arcy Brophy told the Hollywood Ad Club the other day. Mr. Brophy, retiring board chairman of Kenyon & Eckhardt, was on his way home from an Ad Council board meeting in San Francisco and he recounted some of the public service achievements reported there. Item: $10 million raised in 10 days in the Red Cross flood relief campaign "for which radio and television were largely responsible." Item: Fewer traffic deaths than anticipated over the Labor Day weekend, a result of a Council campaign in which the broadcast media played a major part. Item: New series of Smokey the Bear tv commercials, latest step in a continuing campaign that in 17 years has cut forest fire losses from 30 million burned out acres in 1942 to 6 million in 1956. Item: More than 90% of all advertisers sponsoring regular programs on the three tv networks already pledged to consistent participation in Council campaigns this coming season; special program sponsors are also pledging their cooperation. Item: Agreement with the Alliance of Television Film Producers for Council campaign support from tv filmed programs. The American system of broadcasting is undergoing right now one of the recurring periods in which it is made the scapegoat for many of the nation's ills. Everybody, from congressional committees to PTA groups, seems eager to tell the world just what's wrong with radio and — especially — television. For inserting a beautiful bouquet into this barrage of brickbats, Mr. Brophy has earned the gratitude of all who are working to keep American broadcasting free, competitive and of major service to the American public — advertisers, agencies, programmers and broadcasters alike. Pastime or Industry? THE baseball season is over. The New York Giants move to San Francisco next season. The Dodgers soon will desert Brooklyn to become the Bums of Los Angeles, unless a hitch develops. These New York clubs were enticed westward by promises of richer harvests for their owners. Illusions of handsome returns from wired subscription television — as yet an untested and untried medium — admittedly turned the trick. Baseball calls itself the "national pastime." Unlike football and other professional sports, it isn't subject to the antitrust laws. But baseball functions as a well-organized industry, moving franchises and players as will best suit the commercial interest of the individual club owner. The profit motive is uppermost. If things work out as planned, neither the Giants nor the Dodgers games will be on the air next season from their west coast locales. They will be on wired toll tv, assuming (1) that the toll tv entrepreneurs get their franchises; (2) that they can effectively wire enough homes to begin service, even conceding that the systems will work technically; and (3) that the public proves willing to pay for closed circuit operations day-in-day-out, and whether the clubs are winners or losers. There are other important aspects, however, that will make the Giant-Dodger projects a dangerous gamble. Will their road games be available back home? Will it prove economically feasible to feed road games (it's 3,000 miles from the East Coast to the West Coast) by coaxial cable to a single urban area like San Francisco or Los Angeles, particularly when, at best, only a small percentage of the homes will be wired? Will the cables be available, taking into account regular network commitments and the time differentials? The baseball club owners know that without play-by-play publicity they can lose their shirts. Radio and television stimulated interest where none had existed before, particularly among women. Good teams, high in the standings, draw big gates, even with all games broadcast and telecast. The west coast shifts, tied into wired toll tv (again assuming it works) may prove an interesting experiment. So the play-by-play won't be seen or heard free. The clubs lose the substantial sponsorship revenue. The time will be filled by other broadcast fare, which Page 138 • October 7, 1957 Drawn for BROADCASTING* TELECASTING by Sid HLs "No longer need you lose the thread of the story when a tv program loses the sound. Just send . . ." of necessity will be good enough to compete with the smattering of closed-circuit play-by-play. Other ball clubs will be watching closely. The Giants and Dodger '"performers" will be relatively unpublicized on the air. How fast will they wilt? As we've said before, the club owners can handle or sell thenproducts as they see fit. It is their private property (which seems to be in conflict with their "national pastime" concept). By the same token, broadcasters can sell their product, which is time, as they see fit. And once that time is sold, it might not be easy to revamp schedules to accommodate the baseball industry, except perhaps at the going card rates. Color Competition RTHUR PORTER, vice president and media director of J. Walter Thompson Co., is a man worth listening to. Two weeks ago he made a speech to a newspaper group in Chicago. He was telling newspapers how they might combat television, but there is a lesson of equal merit for television broadcasters in what he said. In a speech at the second newspaper ROP color conference, Mr. Porter warned flatly that "once [color television] hits and color commericals can be used on a broad basis, the competition for the national advertising dollar will hit a new and unprecedented level of intensity." The moral is clear: newspapers had better get runof-paper color off the ground in a hurry. Reading accounts of speeches by representatives of newspaper interests at the same meeting, we find ourselves in the unaccustomed position of agreeing with much of what they said. For they were agreeing with Mr. Porter that color tv is going to make life even harder for ihem. The quality of ROP color is indescribably inferior to broadcast color — FCC wouldn't even have considered it. But alert newspapers, already harassed on all sides by the superiority of blackand-white television, are not apt to pass up any opportunity to improve and entrench it if they see in ROP color any chance to offset the even greater competition they'll get from color television. Magazine color is another thing. The better magazines now are physically capable of producing handsome color advertising — an advantage as long as television is restricted to black-and-white. This one advantage of the magazines will disappear as the color television audience increases. Color tv is moving — but not fast. Its progress would be much swifter if more broadcasters got behind it more aggressively. Newspapers' awareness of the importance of color should prod them. It would be economically short-sighted for broadcasters to dally and risk letting the newspapers take anything away from them, even for a little while. The time to capitalize on an advantage is while you've got it. Broadcasting • Telecasting