Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

WDBJ for 33 years OUTSTANDING in ROANOKE and Western Virginia RADIO by any measurement! According to N. C. S. No. 2, WDBJ has more than TWO TIMES the DAILY N. C. S. Circulation of Station "B"; more than THREE TIMES the circulations of Stations "C" and "D". In the latest Roanoke Metropolitan Area Pulse Report. WDBJ has a 47% share of total morning audience, 43% share of total afternoon audience, and 38% share of total evening audience. Tune-in same periods is high: 21.6, 23.8, 18.8. All figures are Monday through Friday averages. Ask your Peters, Griffin, Woodward "Colonel". PROGRAM SERVICES CONTINUED retrieved until the end of the franchise, 21 years hence. As it is impossible to get a wired toll tv operation going in Los Angeles without the telephone company, Mr. Harris said it does not seem like good business to commit his organization to making bond payments for 21 years until he has some assurance that the telephone company will offer the kind of service that is needed and at a price that seems economically feasible for Harriscope to pay for such services. Mr. Harris pointed out that toll tv franchises in Los Angeles are to be non-exclusive and that, should its present grant be cancelled for failure to comply with the posting of the $100,000 bond now, Harriscope could apply for another franchise at some future date. He said he hoped this would not be necessary, that PT&T would shortly supply the information that Harriscope wants and so provide the basis for filing the bond and making its franchise effective. But he emphasized that without the assurance of service, Harriscope does not intend to proceed with the bonding requirements of the city. SNI to Televise Hoop Series Sports Network Inc. will televise big ten basketball games for the fourth consecutive season starting Dec. 14, it was announced Saturday by Kenneth L. Wilson, western Conference commissioner. The 13-game schedule, slated to run through March 8. 1958, will be sponsored by American Tobacco Co. for Lucky Strike cigarettes, through BBDO New York, and Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, through D'Arcy Adv. Co., Chicago. Standard has station clearances from 21 markets and possible commitments from eight others for the regional telecasts. About 35 midwestern stations have been lined up for the network, according to the Big Ten. Pay Tv Exhibit Opened in N. Y. International Telemeter Corp. last week set up a permanent unit in New York for demonstrations of Telemeter's closed-circuit pay tv system. Equipment, according to Howard G. Minsky, ITC's eastern sales manager, has been installed at the Paramount Bldg. on Times Square. The unit shows each step from transmission point to the tv set at the viewer's home. Special demonstrations of the system have been held in Los Angeles (where a permanent unit was set up last March), New York and Miami Beach, with others now being planned elsewhere. Liberty Offers Record Services Liberty Records has inaugurated Liberty Disc Services, new "low cost" subscription plans for radio stations. Service No. 1 provides all Liberty popular and classical LP albums with a minimum of 60 LPs per year and all popular singles at a cost of $5 a month. Service No. 2 provides all standard LP catalog numbers at $1 each. Si Waronker and Jack Ames are in charge of the new service, designed especially to supply station programming needs. MR. GANNETT STATIONS Frank Gannett Dies; Owned Stations, Papers Frank E. Gannett, 81, president emeritus of Gannett Co., died Monday at his home in Rochester, N. Y. He had been relatively inactive in the broadcasting-newspaper empire for some time, having suffered a fractured spine in 1955 and a subsequent stroke. Funeral services were held Friday in the First Unitarian Church, Rochester, with burial in Mt. Hope Cemetery. The Gannett organization owns four radio and three tv stations: WHEC-AM-TV Rochester; WENY Elmira, N. Y.; WDAN-AM-TV Danville, 111., and WINR-AM-TV Binghamton, N. Y. The company also owns minority interest in WHDC, Olean, N. Y. In late November the company contracted to buy KOVR (TV) Stockton, Calif., from H. Leslie Hoffman, president of Hoffman Radio Co., for $3.1 million [Stations, Nov. 25]. Mr. Gannett was succeeded as operating head of the organization last April by Paul Miller, then executive vice president. A New York farm boy, Mr. Gannett sold newspapers at the age of nine. At Cornell U., Ithaca, N. Y., he earned $3 a week as campus reporter for the Ithaca Journal, graduating to a $10 a week job on the Syracuse Herald. In 1906 he bought an interest in the Elmira Gazette, a venture that Was the beginning of the Gannett newspaper group. In 1936 he was a candidate for the GOP vice presidential nomination, and was put up in the Ohio primaries. He campaigned extensively for the presidential nomination in 1940. receiving 33 votes on the first ballot and losing to Wendell Willkie. Surviving are his wife, the former Caroline Werner; a daughter, Mrs. Charles Vincent McAdam Jr., of Greenwich, Conn., and an adopted son, Dixon Gannett, of Dearborn, Mich. There are six grandchildren. Wi!Iiamsf Owner of WAYX, Dies Jack Williams Sr., 79, owner of WAYX Waycross, Ga., and editor-publisher of the Waycross Journal-Herald since 1915. died Dec. 2 after being ill several weeks. He formerly served in the U.S. Congress and as a Georgia state legislator. As president of the Georgia Press Assn. in 1933, Mr. Williams directed a project to build the Little White House for the late Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Warm Springs, Ga.. Polio Foundation. WHIL Boosts Rates, Power WHIL Boston-Medford, Mass., has raised its rates, following a power boost from 1 to 5 kw, according to Sherwood J. Tarlow, president. Rate card No. 5 lists the onetime, hour rate at $100 and a one-minute spot at $12. WDBJ AM • 960 Kc. • 5000 watts FM • 94.9 Me. • 14,600 watts ROANOKE, VIRGINIA Page 82 • December 9, 1957 Broadcasting