Broadcasting (Apr - June 1960)

teamed on the tv show The American Civil War, will produce and write the radio series, respectively. Roy Ross is musical director. WBC radio stations are: KDKA Pittsburgh; KYW Cleveland; WO WO Fort Wayne, Ind.; KEX Portland, Ore.; WBZ Boston, and WIND Chicago. New film package ■ ABC Films Inc., N.Y., announces the availability of its “Empire 35” package of 35 full length J. Arthur Rank feature films. Several of the films — “Children Galore,” “Don’t Ever Leave Me,” “The Hornet’s Nest” and “One Jump Ahead” — have never been shown in U.S. movie theatres, according to ABC Films. Ginger's show ■ Ginger Rogers will star in a new half-hour film series to be produced jointly by 20th Century-Fox Television and her own company, Lincoln Productions. Series, to be ready for broadcasting this fall, is as yet untitled but it will not be an anthology series, Peter G. Levathes, president of 20thFox TV, said in announcing the program. Miss Rogers will dominate each episode, he said. Production of the pilot is scheduled for mid-June. His Honor speaks ■ All 11 Philadelphia radio stations, am and fm, are carrying the city’s five-minute Report to the People. The weekly taped It’s for reels -YOURS ! For answers to your tape problems, see your 3M representative or write: 3M Company, St. Paul 6, Minnesota. M""mg “SCOTCH" is a registered trademark of the 3M Co., St. Paul 6, Minn. The ‘hyphenated writer’ Hollywood is undergoing a “quiet revolution” with the writer emerging as king, according to Aaron Spelling, writer-producer of Four Star Production’s Zane Grey Theater. Mr. Spelling, who was in New York on a business trip with his wife, actress Caroline Jones, estimated that at least 10% of the producers of tv film series are also writers and predicted that eventually “all producers will be writers.” The reason? Mr. Spelling claims that advertisers, more and more are reaching the conclusion that the writer is “the single most important force” in a tv film series, and the “star value” often is secondary. “Madison Avenue is asking: ‘Who’s the writer?’ before buying a series,” Mr. Spelling reported. “As a result, production firms are offering many successful writers the op portunity to serve as producer on a series, with the stipulation they write six or eight scripts.” Rod Serling, writer-producer of Twilight Zone and Stirling Silliphant, writer-producer of Naked City are two outstanding examples of what Hollywood is beginning to call the “hyphenated writer.” But Mr. Spelling noted that at Four Star there are two other writer-producers — Steve Lord and Bob Soddenberg. The effect of the emergence of the “hyphenated writer” will be an upgrading in. tv film scripts, Mr. Spelling contends. Even the muchcastigated “western” will undergo an uplift in standards as “the play becomes the thing,” according to writer-producer Spelling. He observed that audiences — both movie and tv — are intrigued by a western background but added that there “is no reason why, within this appealing framework, that we cannot write scripts that are mature — psychological dramas, good comedy and suspense thrillers.” Mr. Spelling series had been presented in 15-minute segments for the past several years, but was being played by a decreasing number of stations. The programs feature discussions of city problems by the mayor, city council president and city managing director among other authorities. The 11 stations all agreed to run the programs if they could be tailored to five minutes each. Shorts to tv ■ Theatrical shorts series which Columbia Pictures turned out for more than 20 years under the generic title of “Screen Snapshots” are being adapted for tv release by Columbia’s tv subsidiary, Screen Gems, as halfhour programs titled It Happened in Hollywood. Ralph Staub produced the original series and is producing them for tv as well. Vincent Price will serve as host for the series. MG A wins two ■ Musicians Guild of America has won a collective bargaining election of musicians at Ziv Television Programs and Ivan Tors Films by a vote of 26 to 1 over the American Federation of Musicians, with two ballots challenged. MGA was previously chosen to represent the musicians employed by members of the Alliance of Television Film Producers, but Ziv, an alliance member, was omitted from that election because it was not employing musicians at that time. Since then, Ziv Jias announced plans for adding live music to a number of its filmed programs for television. Presumably Ziv will henceforth be represented in the negotiations now in progress between ATFP and MGA over terms of a contract for musicians employed in the production of tv filmed programs. Pressing and promo ■ Two newly formed companies, All-Disc Records Inc. and Disc Service Inc., will cooperate in offering customers record promotion programs, productions, pressing, packaging, distribution and exploitation, it was announced by I.J. Amo and Gene Jensen, presidents of the respective firms. Although operating as separate entities, the two companies will be located at the same address: 114 W. 1st St., Roselle, N.J. Hollywood office ■ Official Films Inc. has announced the opening of offices in Hollywood at 951 N. La Cienega Blvd. Phone: Oldfield 5-6705. The west coast branch, to be managed by Howard Landau and Barney Mackall, will be used primarily for production coordination. CBS exchange plan ■ A public affairs program exchange plan in which three CBS-owned tv stations participated last year will be expanded to five CBSowned stations in 1960, it was announced by Craig Lawrence, vice president, CBS-TV stations. Each of the participants (WBBM TV Chicago, KNXT [TV] Los Angeles, WCBS-TV 68 (PROGRAMMING) BROADCASTING, May 30, 1960