Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

EDITORIALS The Ten Percenters FOR MORE than two months Broadcasting editors have been exploring the world of the talent agent. It is a murky world where figures are indistinct and the line between reality and fantasy sometimes imperceptible. Most of its inhabitants prefer it that way. Talent agents, as a class, seek the shadows for themselves as they seek the limelight for their clients. Some of them will go to fantastic extremes to avoid personal publicity. One major agency refused to release a picture of its late founder unless its present management could read and approve our story, a condition we were unwilling to grant. A Broadcasting photographer was ejected from three big agencies when he attempted to take pictures of the company names on their entrance doors. Only a few of the bigger talent agents were willing to talk freely to our editors. Others talked, but only in exchange for a promise of anonymity. Still others refused to disclose any information of significance about their businesses, obliging us to go to other sources for the material we sought. We recite these experiences not to illustrate the difficulty of the research that went into the story in this issue but to lead up to this question: What are agents trying to hide? It is tempting, but it would be inaccurate, to assume that talent agents prefer personal obscurity for the same reasons that thieves work in the night. As far as our editors could determine, this is not the case. The passion for anonymity comes from other causes. One is the intense competition which prevails among agents. Presumably agents feel they can protect themselves from client raids by other agents if they can keep their client lists from being known. Another reason for agent secrecy is tradition. In its early forms, the agent business was conducted in ways that would have aroused the intense interest of moralists, if not the police. Standards have improved since then, but the urge for secrecy persists. This urge, we suggest, is outmoded. As our careful research clearly shows, the talent agent has become an influential force in television. In sum, agents account for a $50 million piece of the television economy. By various devices they exert a strong measure of control over many of the most important programs on the air. Their position has become too important to be ignored — or concealed. The talent agent has developed to a point at which it becomes the duty of the television advertiser, advertising agency and broadcaster to determine if the talent agent is making a contribution equal to his revenue. At the moment, there are divergent views on that question — mainly, we suspect, because few people fully understand the talent agent's business. It is a business which, like other parts of broadcasting, ought to stand up to scrutiny. The Way to Equality THE slow progress made in many areas by broadcast journalism has provided newspapers with a favorable atmosphere for their efforts to keep radio-tv reporters away from public events. In the past year they have kept broadcast newsmen out of public proceedings at Los Angeles, and just recently print reporters in New York forced Idlewild airport to grant them separate interviews with newsworthy travelers. Reluctance of some stations to accept their journalistic responsibilities recently led Charles Shaw, WCAU-AM-TV Philadelphia, to call for coverage of news by trained professionals. And Gov. Robert D. Holmes, of Oregon, a former broadcaster, told last week's NARTB Portland meeting that broadcasters by and large are "failing to do a good job of news reporting" and refusing to assume editorial positions in community and national affairs. Except in Colorado, where a favorable Supreme Court decision has been obtained, broadcasters are running into frequent resistance in coverage of court proceedings and other public events. The problem is becoming increasingly critical, and the Radio-Television News Directors Assn. considers it one of the top issues coming before its Nov. 6-9 conference at Miami Beach, Fla. The advanced technology of modern broadcasting gives large and small stations alike the chance to record history as it happens — vividly, completely and accurately. Many are doing so. Others are Page 144 • October 21, 1957 FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION Drawn for BROADCASTING by Sheiwin L. Tobias "12,321 . . . 12,322 . . . 12,323. . . ." not. Without professionals at microphone and camera these devices are as useless as a fast newspaper press in a poorly staffed plant. RTNDA is leading the way to improved broadcast reporting. Its four-day program at Miami is built around a series of how-to-do sessions, with top newsmen swapping ideas and techniques. The more progressive news stations have found they can combine able reporting with audience expansion and sponsor response. But something more is needed before the equality with the print media will come to broadcast journalism. Complete, imaginative and professional coverage of the news is essential, but it is not enough. Until the broadcast media undertake the counterpart of an editorial page on the air, particularly in community affairs, they will not command the respect public officials accord the printed media which do editorialize. Editorializing is no assignment for the timid station owner. It requires fortitude and the willingness to take a few lumps. In no other way, however, can he become a force in his community. He will then become an electronic newspaper, with a mechanism that can fight back. That is the language the politician understands. The Count That Counts ONE of these ulcerated days a self-sacrificing business scientist may assign himself to the job of developing a method of orbiting the harried life of a businessman — a way of office life that will produce maximum achievement and money out of a 9-5:30-or-later routine. Pending arrival of that happy era, the best interim procedure is to utilize available ways of getting the most out of every minute — especially the minutes devoted to acquisition of commercial information. Luckily there's a way of getting information efficiently and of communicating effectively with others engaged in broadcasting's facets. It's simple — the use of an accepted business device, Audit Bureau of Circulations. October is ABC Month. This method of showing who buys a publication — newspaper, magazine or business — has gained universal acceptance among those who spend money to buy space in publications. There's a good reason for this esteem: ABC shows how many people think enough of a publication to pay for its delivery to their offices and homes. Broadcasting joins the ABC celebration by observing its first anniversary as a member of the exclusive group — the only member in the radio-tv publication field. It commends ABC as an important aid to those who use publications in their work as a means of knowing what is happening, and what's going to happen. Broadcasting