Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1960)

IN SACRAMENTO A QUALITY AUDIENCE Surveys consistently show KCRA a leader in adult audience ... an audience with high spending power, able to buy anything from cigarettes to swimming pools. VOLUME AUDIENCE, TOO! KCRA shows sound ratings in all time periods, and an exceptionally high percentage of unduplicated homes. PLUS TOP MERCHANDISING The only full time merchandising department in the area, with the biggest in-store chain tie-ins . . . probably the finest merchandising service in national spot and network advertising during the first half of 1960, an increase of 45% over the $14.7 million in the like period of 1959. During this period, national spot billing rose to $13.2 million, as compared with $12.4 million in 1959, while network billings increased to almost $8.1 million from $2.3 million in the first half of 1959. The most active advertisers in this category during the first six months of 1960 were Texaco with tv gross time billing of almost $6.4 million; Esso Standard Oil, $1.5 million; Mobil Oil, $1.4 million; Shell Oil, $1.4 million and At lantic Refining Co., $1.0 million. Beer and ale advertising in the period rose from $24.5 million last year to $26.3 million. Of the total for the 1960 period, TvB said, $22.9 million was spent in national spot and $3.4 million in network tv. Anheuser-Busch Inc. led the brewery advertisers with network and national spot gross time billing of $2.3 million, followed by Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co., $2.2 million; Falstaff Brewing Corp., $1.8 million; Carling Brewing Co., $1.8 million; Theo Hamm Brewing Co., $1.4 million, and Pabst Brewing Co., $1.3 million. How tv fits into K&E changes William B. Lewis, Kenyon & Eckhardt's board chairman, is back in television. Not that he ever really left, but hell have more time now to dig into the medium and its role at the agency. Mr. Lewis in becoming board chairman and passing the presidential baton to David C. Stewart, who as executive vice president already has (Week's Headliners, Sept. 19), need not concern himself so much with energy-taxing administration of an advertising entity that bills around $90 million annually (some $40 million in tv). His associates say that Mr. Lewis — himself a former top broadcast executive and one of the few agency leaders with that background — will be working even more closely than in the past with James S. Bealle, the agency's vice president and director of radio-tv programming. It was in the Lewis regime that K&E worked its business upward from a level of a $34 million a year billing. Initiated during Mr. Lewis' administration (1951-1960) was a concept of totally servicing clients in marketing and creative areas. Concentration was on a limited client list which obtained this attention in services. Mr. Lewis in his new post of board chairman will devote himself also to client contact and new business development (an area in which he has been quite successful in the past). Joined in Radio ■ The rise of William Lewis at K & E occurred rapidly and impressively. He joined the agency in 1944 as vice president in charge of radio serving in the executive ranks at CBS. Soon afterward he was made account supervisor and elected a director, paving the way to his election in 1951 as president. In a letter to clients informing them of the change in K & E's man agement positions, Mr. Lewis explained that it was made by the board of directors "in accordance with a long-conceived plan for succession in our management." In the change-over, Edwin Cox, who was K & E's board chairman, was elected chairman of the executive committee, and said Mr. Lewis: "Each of us, Ed, Dave and myself, will have a clearly defined area of responsibility, but the executive leadership, under the executive committee and the board, now passes to Dave." (David Stewart is a 15-year veteran of the agency.) That Mr. Stewart has long been groomed for the post was indicated also by Mr. Lewis: "Dave has, in fact, been our chief administrative officer for some time," he wrote, "so the change is in no way a radical one." Mr. Lewis' broadcast knowledge dates back 1935 when he joined CBS as commercial program director. He served at CBS successively as program director and as vice president in charge of programs. He was the first at CBS to serve in that post and was the network's youngest vice president at the time. He went to Washington in 1941 on a leave of absence to serve as chief of the radio division of the Office of Facts & Figures. In that position, Mr. Lewis coordinated the government's radio activities and when the bureau was merged with others to form the Office of War Information, he was appointed chief of the domestic radio bureau where he also organized and operated the radio allocation plan. In 1942 he was made assistant director of OWI's domestic branch. After the war at CBS, Mr. Lewis was on special assignment to survey the attitudes of public leaders toward the American system of broadcasting, a study that has been referred to often as an outstanding contribution to radio. 42 (BROADCAST ADVERTISING) BROADCASTING, September 26, 1960