Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

TO TURN RANDOM TUNERS INTO VETERAN VIEWERS Now — in many markets— three great adventure -action series combined into one great 5-daya-week show! Why pay a pretty penny for programs when you can get top-rated series in your market and hold on to all of your own cash! For complete details about this new plan, phone today. Or wire Michael M. Sillerman at TPA for your market's availability. Hurry! Marketsare being reserved today! Wire or phone for private screening! Television Programs of America, Inc. 488 Madison Ave., N.Y. 22 • PLaza 5-2100 IN REVIEW CONQUEST The often over-worked phrase "public service programming" got a new meaning — and much-needed lustre— yesterday (Sunday) between 5 and 6 p.m. The show was Conquest, the first in a series of 10 special, hour-long shows dealing exclusively with the quest for new knowledge [Advertisers & Agencies, Nov. 18]. Opening in the laboratories of Manhattan's Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Conquest first took the viewer to the edge of life — into the mysterious biological world of cells, plasma and tissues where "a quiet revolution" is taking place. Magnificently photographed, the tableau came up with some fascinating X-ray shots of the human body in motion, a virus magnified 100,000 times by an electroscope, and the awesome and frightening spectacle of parasites eating into blood cells and the beginnings of cancer. "What is the chemistry of death?" asked host Eric Sevareid. In his traditional manner of understating the case, he answered himself: "They're trying to find out." Having gone to the innermost corners of human life, Conquest next plunged its inquisitive cameras beneath the ocean waves to witness the work — both in and out of water — of Columbia U.'s Dr. Morris Ewing and a staff of oceanographers as they probed deep into the earth's crust and set off underwater detonations to arrive at a number of startling revelations. Among them: that the world may be in for another ice age sooner than it now thinks possible — a few years, not eons, away. From there, Conquest soared off to the edge of space as CBS-TV unveiled for the first time an exclusive, step-by-step filmed report on last summer's "Operation Man High," man's first successful attempt to stay alive at the threshold of space for 32 hours and 8 minutes. This was truly the stuff of which drama is made: the ascent of USAF Maj. David G. Simons, head of the Air Force Space Biology Lab, 19.2 miles up in a hermetically-sealed cabin. The drama was heightened by a classic example of nature's hazards to adventuresome men: a thunderstorm that extended Maj. Simons' ordeal for hours and which might have cost him his life. Asked CBS newsman Bill Downs, who was on the spot: "Has man dared too much?" The sponsor and the producers are not merely concerned with the advancement of science; they also pose a "moral question" — that of mankind's assumption of new responsibilities for each new conquest. Thus, it was highly fitting that the last few minutes of the program should have been taken up with a three-way conversation between Mr. Sevareid and two leading scientists: Dr. Lawrence Snyder, a geneticist who is president of the cooperating American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and Dr. Allen Waterman, director of the U. S.supported National Science Foundation. Among the problems posed: the price we now are paying for having restricted "intellectual freedom" at a time the Russians were sparing no expense or lives in breaking the space barrier; the urgent need for fully trained scientists and the lack now existing; the fallacy of a generalized crash program to beat the Soviet Union and the absurdity Of the argument that money will be the cure-all of our scientific dilemma. Production costs: $200,000. Sponsored by Monsanto Chemical Co., through Gardner Adv., on CBS-TV. Premiere Sun. Dec. 1, 5-6 p.m. EST. Producer: Michael Sklar; directors: Norton Bloom, Arthur Zegart; writers: Norman Borisoff, Howard Turner, Arthur Zegart, James Shute, John E. Pfeiffer; host: Eric Sevareid; cooperating organizations: American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences. TWENTIETH CENTURY Ever since the Moscow purge trials of the thirties, when men of great repute in the Soviet hierarchy did a turnabout and confessed to the most heinous of state crimes — down through the score of "brainwashed" confessions that have become part of daily reportage in the last decades — Western observers have asked, "Why did they — and what made them — crack?" The best explanation of what constitutes brainwashing was offered Nov. 24 by six victims of this cruel art: symbols of the age of mass conformity and all ex-prisoners of the Soviet state. Writer Al Wasserman, remembered for his CBS-TV documentary on mental health ("Out of Darkness" on The Search) made do without a story line; he needed none. Effectively, CBS Public Affairs placed several of its witnesses in simulated prison settings and allowed them to talk freely and openly. The "symbols": Dr. Edith Bone, 68-year old Hungarian-born British subject (and ex-communist), imprisoned in Budapest on charges of espionage in 1949 and freed during last year's abortive revolution; Associated Press correspondent William Oatis, convicted on charges of espionage in Prague in 1951 and released two years later after the Czechs had a "price" from the U. S.; British radio technician Robert Ford, captured in Tibet after the Chinese communists invaded Lhasa in 1950 and released in Hong Kong this year, and three USAF officers captured during the Korean war and freed at Panmunjom several years ago. Of the six, only one — radio specialist Ford • — actually underwent "ideological reformation" or brainwashing. The others played to the Red Piper's tune so long as it served their purposes and escaped relatively unscratched. Of the remaining five, Dr. Bone triumphed over her captors by seven years of beating the Communists at their own game — patience. Was Oatis guilty? "Yes," he said, by the "loose standards" of Czech justice which equated reporting with spying against the state. The pattern of brainwashing— (1) physical privations and torture leading to (2) psychological pressure and (3) "liberation" or confession — was revealed by the three Air Force officers and Mr. Ford. The lesson of this hour was plain. "Noth Page 12 • December 2, 1957 Broadcasting