Broadcasting (Apr - June 1960)

OUR RESPECTS TO . . . Kevin Brendan There isn’t much that Kevin Brendan Sweeney won’t do for radio. He’ll tangle with anybody, not excluding the radio broadcasters from whence comes his daily bread. He’ll get into a cowboy outfit, or a Civil War uniform, if he thinks it’ll help the cause. He’ll go anywhere; no man in recent memory has traveled or talked more in radio’s behalf. He’s been doing these things, and more, for the last eight years. And a couple of months ago he was signed again, as president of the Radio Advertising Bureau, to go on doing more of same for the next five years. More of same would be frightening for most men to contemplate: 250,000 airline miles a year, 250 nights a year in hotel rooms from Bangor to Yuba City. Kev Sweeney may not enjoy it, but he makes the most of it. “Maybe I don’t know much about radio,” he quips, “but I can sure give you a rundown on the hotels.” All this travel — to RAB regional meetings, to sales clinics, to talk to advertisers and agencies individually and to meet with them in groups — represents only a part of his job. Between planes, and by telephone from wherever he happens to be, he supervises a staff of 58 and administers a budget that will exceed $1.2 million this year. Second Choice ■ For a man who devotes most of his working hours to radio — and he doesn’t sleep much — Kev Sweeney got into the business by default, the failure of newspapers to offer him a living wage. Born Dec. 22, 1916, in Los Angeles, a son of Edward and May Sweeney, young Kev first wanted to be a lawyer. After parochial schools and Loyola High in Los Angeles he spent two years in a pre-law course at Loyola U. there. But he became business manager of the student newspaper (“nobody else wanted to bother with soliciting ads”) and his objective changed from law to newspapers. So did he — to the Journalism School of the U. of Southern California. He wanted to be a news writer but instead he became business manager of all USC student publications, a stroke of hard luck that paid his way through school. When he graduated in 1938 and $18 a week was the best offer he could get from newspapers, he turned reluctantly to radio and spent the next 3!4 years in the promotion department of KNX Hollywood and the Columbia Pacific Network. In 1942, when the Blue Network (now ABC) was split off from the Sweeney Red (NBC), he was appointed sales promotion manager for the Blue’s western division. There he helped to build one of the most successful of all daytime audience participation shows, Breakfast in Hollywood — a feat which had to be done all over again when Breakfast went national and the regional network had to replace it or lose all the regional billing that had thus been pre-empted. Mr. Sweeney and colleagues filled the gap by persuading a reluctant Art Linkletter that he could, too, do a daytime audience show five days a week — a feat he has been performing successfully ever since. Discovers Non-Network ■ Next stop was the Navy during the war for two years as an ensign and later lieutenant j.g., “I never saw blue water or heard a shot fired in anger.” He was an administrative officer at the Naval Air Station at Ottumwa, Iowa, assigned primarily to public relations. His job included production of a weekly hour for the Navy on a network of Iowa radio stations, which led him to discover that “there was another part of radio outside the networks.” After the war he went into this other part, tangentially, by joining Fletcher Wiley and his Housewives Protective League programs as general manager. In two years the operation had expanded to the point where CBS bought it for $1 million, and a little later Mr. Sweeney set up offices in Los Angeles as a consultant. One of his clients was KFI-AM-TV Los Angeles, which he shortly joined as full RAB’s Sweeney He has five-year plan, too time general sales manager. The tv station was new “and we did some kookie things to put it in the black.” Things like operating daytime-only because the six other Los Angeles tv stations operated mostly at night; and like going all-live (until a strike came along and they went all-film). The ch. 9 station was sold to Tom O’Neil in 1951 and Mr. Sweeney went with it. A few months later he was offered the job of vice president in charge of sales and promotion for RAB (then known as Broadcast Advertising Bureau). He accepted. The bureau was less than a year old, subsisting on funds diverted from the NAB dues of broadcasters willing to take the chance, and had five months — until the NAB convention the next April — to get organized and sell itself to the industry. Mr. Sweeney and his half-dozen cohorts did the job with a noisy cowboysand-Indians charade that brought in membership commitments representing $200,000 in permanent support. Steady Climb ■ Mr. Sweeney was named executive vice president in November 1953; two months later he was elected president. His new contract continues him in the presidency until March 1965. RAB membership has grown to 1,175. It added 207 members in 1959 and expects a net gain of 250 this year. It’s working on a fiveyear plan which looks toward a goal of 1,900 members and a budget of $2.1 to $2.25 million by 1965. Mr. Sweeney backs his enthusiasm for radio in the most tangible way. He is part owner of KFOX Long Beach — and “I will probably invest in other stations if something good comes along because I believe that radio stations are the soundest investment in the media field.” He says he signed the RAB five-year renewal “because I believe that radio’s great opportunity — and RAB’s — -lies in these next five years.” Mr. Sweeney doesn’t have many hobbies, and most of them have to do with competing media. He watches television (“dispassionately”) and averages about three books and ten magazines a week. Listening to the radio is “hard work” because “I keep asking myself things like: Am I hearing a new formula? What’s the music balance? Is that account co-op and if so, why doesn’t our sales department know about it?” When his contract is up, he plans to go back to California, where his wife, the former Marguerite Taylor, whom he married in 1941, and their children — Greg 14, Sheila 10 and Melissa 8 — live in Woodland Hills, a Los Angeles suburb. “Then,” he says, “I can avoid hotel rooms and airline meals, and start listening to the radio for fun again.” BROADCASTING, May 23, 1960 113