Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1962)

BROADCAST ADVERTISING TV'S AUDIENCE CONTINUES GROWTH The viewer: young, medium income, city dweller-Nielsen Today's television audience continues to show growth, and an emphasis on youth and middle-income, large-metropolitan-area families. For the most part, viewing follows a day-period pattern set in the past, including increases in afternoon audiences and a slight decline in prime time. As in the past, the vast percentage of this audience's viewing time is spread over the nighttime schedule. The audience also has a variable tv taste that changes rapidly from season to season. These brief observations are discernible from "The Television Audience 1962," an A. C. Nielsen Co. special report released to complete service clients, which presents the state of the tv medium and profiles its audience. Basically, its points reflect the evidence gathered a year ago and freshened for Broadcasting late last winter (Broadcasting, Feb. 19, 1962). While the full report is confidential, here are some of the highlights: ■ The number of tv homes in the U. S. is increasing steadily. The total now stands at 49 million compared to 46.9 million a year ago. More than 90% of U. S. famihes have at least one tv receiver (up from 88% a year ago). ■ The average daily hours of viewing total 5 hours 6 minutes per home. This is lower than peak 1958 when the average was 5 hours 13 minutes, but higher than both 1959 and 1960. In 1961 this was 5 hours 7 minutes. ■ Nighttime viewing (prime time, 7:30-11 p.m., Sun.-Sat.) shows a slight decline to 1 hour 54 minutes. This yearly decrease has been evident over the past five years (from 2 hours 3 minutes in 1958). ■ Daytime viewing during this time has shown an increase — now up to 1 hour 29 minutes and a new high for any year over the five-year period. Daytime hours in Nielsen's surveying are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday. Early evening and late evening viewing, now at 55 and 26 minutes respectively, have remained unchanged for the most part. The A. C. Nielsen report also makes these points: As expected, tv usage reaches a peak between 8 and 10 p.m. during winter months; an average of 64% of U. S. homes are tuned in during these hours. This drops to 52% in summer. Daytime and nighttime tv gets into nearly all tv homes. From Nielsen figures it's apparent that 85% of tv families "use" the set in the daytime, and 96% in the nighttime in the course of a "typical" winter week (during summer, of course, these percentages drop to 75 and 91 respectively.) Not surprising are these reports: ■ There's an acceleration toward multi-sponsorship and participations in prime evening programs for "greater audience reach" and because of high costs and uncertain new show status. ■ Last season about one out of four evening programs used in-season reruns. And of especial interest in this area: as a group, these repeats did nearly as well as the originals in at Factor tells how DDB translates ad ideas to other media In translating advertising for a particular product from one medium to another, the essential thing is to have a strong basic idea to begin with, Ted Factor, vice president of Doyle Dane Bernbach and manager of the agency's Los Angeles office, explained recently there. Gimmicks that are eye-catching in print or tv, or unusual sounds on radio don't carry over very well when a campaign is extended from one medium into another, he told the Nov. 15 Southern California Broadcasters Assn. meeting. But strong copy will come out equally well on the air or in print. Mr. Factor emphasized his point with several examples from the work of his own agency. A Holly sugar newspaper ad was made up of squares with the picture of a can of brand-name coffee in each square and underneath — square by square and word by word — the copy: "They taste even better with — " leading the reader to the final square which shows a clearly labeled sack of Holly sugar. For radio, to reproduce the eye-catching device of the newspaper ad would have been clearly impossible, he noted, but the essential idea was translated into a jingle in which the brand names of not only coffees, but also teas and cereals, were amusingly combined in jingly rhyme between the identical opening and closing stanza which effectively punched home the idea that Holly sugar "makes good things better to eat." The Ohrbach newspaper ads, which tell the store's high fashionlow price story in large dramatic pictures and a minimum of copy, on radio became, "Only Ohrbach's has the clothes that make the woman without breaking the man." American Airlines' billboard picture of the Statue of Liberty with the caption, "Don't keep a lady waiting," on radio became an assortment of voices, each expressing a personal opinion on New York, followed by the announcement that American Airlines can get you there at nearly the speed of sound. For Levy's bread the bold billboard words translate into a childish lisp on radio, equally impressive. This simplicity of the print ads for the Volkswagen becomes, on radio, the voice of an eight-year old girl, unhappy over the "awful looking car" daddy just bought. "I guess daddy doesn't care what people think of us. Why we don't even use the expensive gas any more." The broadcast media, especially radio, suffer in comparison to print advertising in the amount of publicity they get, Mr. Factor observed. Radio ads can't be torn out and saved; they can't be reproduced in advertising trade papers; they can't be pinned to a bulletin board for comparison with the ads of the competition. That is probably why DDB is generally thought of as a print agency, he said. 38 BROADCASTING, November 26, 1962