Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

good digging for sponsors, too! Elton Britt, once prospector for uranium, wrote and recorded for RCA-Victor the first country and western song ever to sell over a million records. His records have sold 12 million plus. Britt is now finding better diggings on WMAL-TV's "Town and Country Time" . . . 2:00-3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday . . . produced by Connie B. Gay, and birthplace of Jimmie Dean, Patsy Cline, and George Hamilton, IV. With Britt, Roy Clark's band, top guest stars, this show digs gold for sponsors too, in the tradition of WM AL-TV, first local station to program country music successfully. I real live daytime programming wmal-tv maximum power on channel 7 WASHINGTON, D.C. AN EVENING STAR STATION Represented by H-R Television, Inc. TALENT AGENTS however reluctantly, had no choice but to do business with them. Aside from a good package — or goo J package components — what does the agent need to prosper? Many answers have been given, including the simple ability to divide by 10, but one successful agent summarized a number of the job specifications like this: "First, he needs a genuine affinity and sensitivity to people and an ability to get along with them and understand them. If he has these things, he will automatically develop good contacts. Second, I think, he needs a good sense of business — an agent must be a good businessman. Third, it's a paradox, but an agent must be half businessman and half artist, or at least he must have a high grade of appreciation at the creative level. Short of that, I believe it's impossible to be a first-rate agent. "You cannot handle writers, directors, producers or actors without being able to read scripts and evaluate — without having real taste. I'm sure you need this as much as you need to be ingenious as a negotiator and bright as a businessman. Not having these artistic attributes can louse you up on both ends — clients won't respect you or the things you suggest to them, and buyers will learn to distrust your suggestions very quickly." There being no formal school that teaches these things, the would-be agent has little choice but to learn them the hard way. There are many places where this may be done, and their only common denominator usually is that they're connected in some way with show business. Some of the bigger agencies have been described as taking likely prospects and training them to be agents in the way U. S. Steel trains its young men to become executives, or big advertising agencies train people to become account executives. Many an agent got his start with an established firm and then, as sometimes happens on Madison Avenue, walked out with a client or two and went on his own. Some agents used to be casting directors for studios, or lawyers who handled business affairs for talent, or perhaps were talent themselves but couldn't make the grade. As a breed, agents over the years have taken a lot of abuse along with their 10%. They've been the butts of many jokes. Fred Allen (or was it Bob Hope? or both?) once described Hollywood as a place where 90% of the people live off 10% of the talent. Yet there seems little doubt that the agent's prestige today, in television anyway, is several cuts above what it was long years ago. A few agents, perhaps more sensitive than most, entered a demurrer, but a majority agreed, along with a sizable majority of network authorities, that today's agent — again, at least in tv — is a respected part of the business. Buyers may not like all that he does all of the time, but it's been a long while since his reputation inspired all manner of sinister cracks. Such as the really old one about the agent who died of an enlarged heart: toward the end it blew up as big as a pea. end Page 58 • October 21, 1957 Broadcasting