Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

the key station in MICHIGAN'S* MIGHTY MIDDLE MARKET with a 24 hour schedule and 5000 LIVELY WATTS has over twice the number of listeners than all other stations combined in (March-April, 1957— C. E. Hooper, Inc.) A K LANSING W contact Venard, Rintoul & McConnell, Inc. * 17 Central Michigan counties with $1,696,356,000 spendable income. OUR RESPECTS to William McElroy Dozier TELEVISION can learn one important lesson from motion pictures: not to try to compete with them in things the movies can do best. So says William Dozier, general program executive of CBS-TV, in charge of all the network's live programming from Hollywood. "The movies tried to compete with tv by putting into theatres the kind of programs most popular with the television audience," he points out. "They learned the hard way that the public just won't go out to get marginal entertainment when they can get this, or better, at home and free. But big attractions are something else again. People are going to see "The 10 Commandments" and "Around the World in 80 Days,*' pictures of the kind they can't get on tv, in greater numbers than ever before. And they're staying away from other pictures, also in greater numbers than ever before. "Tv is out of the novelty stage; it's become a staple item in the entertainment scheme of things; it's had time to learn what it can do best and what it should not attempt at all," he states. We turned down For Whom the Bell Tolls for tv when we realized that we couldn't do as good a job as the motion picture of 10 years ago. Essentially the story is blowing up a bridge and we can't do that very well on tv, so we didn't try it." William McElroy (his mother's maiden name, long since dropped out of his signature) Dozier was born Feb. 13, 1908, in Omaha, where he attended primary and high school and went on to Creighton U. He majored in English, edited the Creightonian, won a place on the debating team coached by Frank Fogarty (now manager of WOW-AM-TV Omaha), was active in dramatics and got in a year of law before receiving his AB degree in 1929. A fellow campus Thespian and law student was Mr. Fogarty's predecessor at WOW, the late John Gillin. Now it was off to Buffalo and the real estate business and, a couple of months later, marriage with Katherine Foley. ("That's how I have a son 27 [Robert] who's going to make me a grandfather before I'm 50." he says wryly.) But by the mid-30's Buffalo real estate buyers were few and far between, so the Doziers migrated to Los Angeles and Bill resumed his law studies at USC ("really to have something to do while I decided what I was going to do next"). When a meeting with Bob Allenberg led to an offer of a job with the Berg-Allenberg talent agency, there went the law career. For six years Bill handled the agency's story and writer clients, then reversed his role and began buying instead of selling, as story and writer head of Paramount Studios. Three years later he moved to RKO as executive assistant to the late Charles Koerner, then vice president in charge of production. After Mr. Koerner's death in 1946, Mr. Dozier became associate head of production at Universal-International. (Also that year, having been divorced, he married Joan Fontaine. Their daughter Deborah is now 9.) Three years later he became a producer at Columbia Pictures and then joined Sam Goldwyn Productions as executive story and writer head. IN THE FALL of 1951, Mr. Dozier joined CBS-TV in New York as head of the story department and director of the search for new talent. The following spring he was named executive producer of dramatic programs, responsible for such outstanding series as Studio One, Danger, Suspense and You Are There, to name only a few. In January 1955, he shifted back to Hollywood as director of network programs from there for CBS-TV and that fall he returned to motion pictures as vice president in charge of production at RKO. Now back at CBS-TV, in charge of all live programs originating in Hollywood — Studio One, Climax, Shower of Stars, Playhouse 90 and Red Skelton Show, plus specials — William Dozier has no fears about television shortly becoming all film. "The costs of film production are getting so high that advertisers who formerly favored filmed programs are now taking a look at live shows," he notes. "Actors are, too. If they have theatre backgrounds, they prefer working on live shows, and residuals have paid off for so few people that tv films don't have the lure for talent they had two or three years ago." Neither a joiner ("the Bel-Air Country Club is the complete list of organizations I belong to") nor a serious hobbyist ("my occasional golf game is certainly not in that class"), Bill Dozier prefers to spend his leisure hours at home with his family. Home is in Beverly Hills (conventional address for a successful Hollywood executive), a residence conventionally equipped with swimming pool and projection room and (most unconventionally) with a telephone whose number is listed in the telephone book. Family is Mrs. Dozier (Ann Rutherford, whom he married in 1953 after his divorce from Miss Fontaine) and their two girls, his Deborah and her 13 -year-old Gloris. WILS ^ c^ofa Page 28 • December 9, 1957 Broadcasting