Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

the lack of detail provided in tv production. • Tulsa agencies are interested, but less so than a month or two back. They aren't worried about 545 homes in a 300,000circulation region. • Tulsa stations aren't napping but they've felt no particular TM impact yet. • Video Independent hasn't backtracked on its flat statement that no TM advertising is contemplated. "We're not in the advertising business," Mr. Griffing said, answering this question for the thousandth time. This isn't ■ technically accurate because the big southwestern chain sells a lot of advertising on its theatre screens. Several questions about the chance of buying TM advertising have been construed as feelers. One unusual twist to the Langer questionnaire was this question asked frequently by people in Bartlesville, "You mean they don't have this in other places?" Judging by nearly a hundred local interviews, families with TM service are spending a little more time looking at their tv sets. Some are let down because a lot of the films aren't as good as "Pajama Game," the Sept. 3 opener. Solid tv programs are still viewed in TM homes but some of the tv time is going to TM. Groups gather at TM homes, much as was the case in tv's early days, but this may taper off when TM loses the novelty element. All the national publicity doesn't fool Mr. Griffing. It's heady stuff, he concedes, but he's more interested in local TM customers than national acclaim. Starting in December he expects to publish a Vumore fan magazine that will list TM shows plus the month's programs of Tulsa tv stations. Two months of Telemovies in Bartlesville have taught Video Independent some basic lessons in programming for this new type of "theatre audience," Mr. Griffing said, but he felt the basic idea of the service is holding up, and no major mistakes have appeared. "There's one thing we might have changed," he added. "We prematurely announced we were going to have our own facilities in Bartlesville and then discovered the telephone company wouldn't give us permission to rent its share of the poles." Instead of paying $3,290 per month, or nearly $40,000 a year to deliver the service over the 38-mile, 5-channel grid, Mr. Griffing would prefer to pay $1.50 per pole per year for his own cables. Video Independent installed the original cables in Bartlesville but then had to sell the facility to the telephone company and start paying rent. Mr. Griffing thought this cable-renting idea might be more practical than ownership of the grid in the case of a larger city. He has pole permits in 36 cities in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi. He hasn't the slightest idea, however, of extending Telemovies to any other city until Bartlesville's lessons have been well learned. He hasn't changed his belief the test must run at least a year or 18 months, the time he figures will elapse before Bartlesville emerges from the red ink. As to programming, Video Independent has found that subscribers want comedies, cartoons and juveniles, as well as first-run and re-run features. This might be due to THE PROGRAM THAT ROCKED DENVER RADIO 3 YEARS AGO STILL THE PACE SETTER! with Stan Brown and a crew of top broadcast news reporters • WARREN CHANDLER • MERWIN SMITH • DICK McMAHON F KLZ's dynamic nighttime radio Stan BrowrT^l *" selling success is a living chronicle of a city after dark covering everything newsworthy that happens in and around Denver or of interest to ' Denver people— no matter where it is! For full details, call your KATZ man or Lee Fondren in Denver. KLZ Radi*^ CBS for the Rocky Mountain Area Broadcasting November 4, 1957 • Page 65