Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1958)

SPECIAL REPORT continued tuning facilities. About 200 translator units are retransmitting station signals. (2) An estimated 1,000 allegedly illegal boosters are operated in mountainous and hilly terrain. They are, in essence, amplifiers that pick up weak signals and give them an added local kick. Because of Congressional and public pressures, the FCC has not seen fit to enforce the Communications Act or its own rules. These boosters are said to cause interference with reception of a station's signal in other areas. In addition they interfere with each other and with community antenna services. In the case of community antenna systems, the FCC has ruled it has no regulatory powers aside from licensing any shortwave relay signals. Money in CATV: There's good money in community antenna systems, given a city or town without two or three solid signals from tv stations. Two main types are operating around the nation — with microwave relays and without. Here are two not-so-fictitious examples: Take the above-average case of a small city — Videoburg — with only one or two fuzzy broadcast tv signals available to the average home. The public appetite for television programming is so keen that anyone offering to pipe in the popular network programs will find a good market in this city of 35,000. Capital is raised from local or outside sources, or both. It doesn't take much money because a $150 installation fee can be charged if off-the-air service is scanty. Microwave service is bought from the telephone company or from a private utility built for the purpose (under FCC license). The Videoburg CATV has been operating five years. It has 6,000 subscribers who have paid $900,000 in installation fees. Their monthly CATV bill is $8. This adds up to $576,000 per year. The costs consist of $6,000 per month for microwave service and $10,000 for wages, advertising and other routine items, or $192,000 per year. Net income before taxes, etc. — $384,000-. Or take the more modest operation in Televille, a city of 25,000 where several distant tv signals are picked up by the CATV system from a nearby hilltop. No microwave service is needed. Every month 4,000 homes pay $3.50 for CATV service, or $168,000 yearly. Collections are good — the service is shut off like the telephone or electricity if bills are not paid promptly. Televille's CATV operators have expenses of $8,000 a month, or $96,000 yearly. Net income before taxes, etc. — $72,000. This company has taken in $600,000 in five years from its $125 installation charge. A lot of this is gravy, just as it was in Videoburg. However, installation fees are disappearing in many areas. These are highly profitable operations, with ideal conditions prevailing. But there are dogs, too — villages of 500 persons or 150 homes, and cities where marginal CATV operations exist. There are cities, Broadcasting small, medium and big, with competitive CATV services. Not all CATV systems are big-money makers, but a lot of them are doing nicely. Problem for advertisers Advertisers and their agencies are quite aware that community television services provide tv station and network circulation that may or may not be reflected in broadcast rate cards. For the most part, however, they pay minimum attention to CATV in making up their tv network and spot schedules. In a spot check of agencies, the great majority said that buyers do not consciously weigh CATV circulation in their buying decisions. A few told Broadcasting they take CATV into consideration whenever they can and add that they would like to do so more often. This is complicated by what they describe as a lack of adequate information providing a uniform check point. More CATV facts are becoming available. American Research Bureau has just published a new "A to Z Coverage Study" covering 210 markets and showing CATV circulation. Nielsen figures may be updated by a survey already conducted for internal use and slated for possible late-summer or autumn release, it is understood. Pressure on rates: An example of advertiser pressure against a station whose hometown has CATV service is offered in an FCC document filed in late April by KLTV (TV) Tyler, Tex. (see Tyler story page 36). Whitehall Laboratories suggested to KLTV that it might be willing to scale down its rates because outside stations are brought to Tyler by CATV. However, an executive of one of the agencies servicing Whitehall said the agency doesn't consider CATV nor does it seek information on the subject. Another Whitehall agency merely construes CATV circulation as "a bonus" when it is involved in a campaign. Officials at all three tv networks say they do not consider the presence of CATV competition in deciding whether or not to affiliate a station, and by and large they say they would not "affiliate" or sell program rights to a CATV system. A few years ago NBC and ABC had an agreement to supply kinescopes to Transcommunity Tv, an organization which was setting up a community system in the West and hoped to expand to other areas. But the understanding reportedly was that Transcommunity would not go into areas in competition with the networks, and in any event the firm was said last week to be out of the CATV business now. NBC said flatly the network would not sell service to CATV systems now and ABC officials took much the same tack. CBS authorities said that they not only wouldn't but that they had refused in the relatively few instances where they had been asked to do so. The Nielsen questionnaire solicited in PREVIEW A titled Englishwoman named Lady Daphne who suffers from chronic mike fright and a spirited male Bedlington named Rover who is anything but shy are trying to make themselves heard over six New York radio stations. Should people listen — and rush right out to buy Spratt's assorted dog biscuits and Fido kibbled dog food — Lady Daphne and friend will invade such other Spratt's markets as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago. In mid-April when Spratt's Patent (America) Ltd., London, left Paris & Peart for Hicks & Greist, both N. Y., H&G copy chief Art Mayer wasted little time in giving Spratt's a new aural image. In this New York test campaign, now on the air, Mr. Mayer has given the imported chow hound a British flavor by having English character actress Lucy Landau portray a flighty, harried member of the Veddy Upper Aristocracy — "the sort of dame one would suspect of using nothing but grade-A porterhouse steak for her precious little darling." Her efforts to communicate with the common people are further impeded by the loud barks of her dog, "but at least it demands attention." With three more months to go till Lady Daphne's "visitor's visa" expires, she can be depended upon to give her all for Spratt's. Comments account supervisor Harry L. Hicks Jr.: "At that time, barring illness or a call back to Whitehall to settle an uprising in the colonies, we expect her to become a permanent resident." LADY DAPHNE (actress Lucy Landau) attempts to communicate the virtues of Spratt's, over interference from | Rover (played here by stand-in talent) recruited from Hicks & Greist — via his owner, H&G's director of public relations, Irving Smith Kogan. May 12, 1958 • Page 39