Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1959)

Awaiting their turn • The first day's witnesses all told substantially the same story of an agency's role in tv: show development but no schedule control. Ready here to testify in detail are (1 to r) : Richard A.R. Pinkham, senior vp in charge of radio-tv, Ted Bates Inc.; Robert L. Foreman, BBDO executive vp for creative services; Larrabee M. Johnson, assistant business manager, Bates tv department, and Harold J. Saz, vp and radio-tv business manager, Bates. finite periods in their schedules before they had been sold to advertisers. Although the agency phase of the hearing was slated to wind up Friday, the question of ""network control" of scheduling is due to rise again July 21. Chief Hearing Examiner James D. Cunningham, presiding over the inquiry, last week ordered a session for that date to hear testimony of Charles B. Ryan, director of merchandising and advertising for Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., and other Firestone officials. This session, to be held in Washington, undoubtedly will deal with the Voice of Firestone, long time radiotv program once bumped off NBC and more recently dropped by Firestone from ABC-TV after that network insisted on moving it to a new time period. Howard Barlow, orchestra conductor on the program, also was listed as a witness. Agencies' Role • The agency executives' testimony regarding their own part in the creation, development and production of programming was broadly uniform. The agencies review pilots, scripts and program ideas in the search for suitable material for their clients, and they also come up with program ideas of their own. They do little actual production on their own, but they keep experts on the scene as liaison and to see that standards of good taste and the client's objectives are adhered to. C. Terence Clyne, senior vice presi dent of McCann-Erickson estimated — and none of his colleagues questioned the figure — that McCann reviewed 225 to 250 pilots in the last three months, 90% of them new investments. At $50,000 apiece these would represent outlays exceeding $10 million. Although their contracts generally do not give them wide-scale rights over production, the witnesses indicated, in actual practice their influence is broad. Robert L. Foreman, executive vice president for creative services of BBDO, for instance, said that no network show in which a BBDO client is the single or an alternate-week sponsor goes on the air without BBDO approval. The executives also were generally agreed on an agency's responsibility to its clients: to present the best possible show, attract the audience the client wants to reach, keep in mind the policies and objectives of the advertiser, and in general win the good will of the public. Nor was there much variation on the agency's responsibility to the public: to see that nothing offensive appears, that quality be kept high, standards of good taste maintained and the levels of programming elevated insofar as possible. Other highlights of the hearing, held before Chief Examiner Cunningham with FCC attorneys Ashbrook P. Bryant and James F. Tierney handling the questioning and with Boardcast Bureau Chief Harold G. Cowgill and Acting Chief James Sheridan of the bureau's economics division sitting in, are presented in the following running account: First on Stand • As lead-off witness Tuesday morning (July 7), Mr. Clyne appeared to lay the groundwork in that he was asked to provide substantial details, a process which took the entire day. McCann's network tv billing was estimated at $65-70 million out of a total tv billing of some $85 million. The agency, Mr. Clyne said, bills $200 million domestically, another $60 million overseas and "a little over $100 million" in all broadcast media. Mr. Clyne, who has been a top executive at McCann for the past five years and before that was associated for years with the Biow Co. (and the Bulova watch account), then was asked to outline the steps at the agency through which a marketing plan must go. This was described by Mr. Clyne as the "basic plan" or "selling proposition" which originates with the product group. Creative problems are handled by McCann's creative plans board while the choice of medium is up to the marketing plans board. The selling proposition then proceeds to the plans review board (which Mr. Clyne headed at McCann for four years) and, if approved, is submitted to the client. If turned down, the plan returns to the product group and is channeled through the same route again. When Tv • What decides whether tv is the right vehicle for a given cam On the bench • James D. Cunningham, chief hearing examiner of the FCC, went to New York last week with Commission lawyers to hear advertising agency executives on their home ground. The hearings on the agency's role in tv were part of the FCC's massive inquiry into network television programming. 32 (BROADCAST ADVERTISING) BROADCASTING, July 13, 1959