Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1963)

irough the aisles, stopped to seize ie baton of the startled Mr. Weston nd, for a few frantic moments relaced him as band leader, climbed ie platform where the background ngers are normally ensconced and id down the pole of a circular :aircase. In the center of the audience secton several rows of seats were left >ut to give the star a chance to slow town for a change of pace segment hat he calls "when I sit down to alk to the people for a breather." Hie novel construction of the Danny Caye Theater lets the cameras sweep jhe entire scene during the broadast. They can follow the star and he other performers like electronic iloodhounds, or swing behind him luring his chat-with-the-audience inerludes. But the theater is more than a suitable stage for the star. It is also a showroom wherein the show's sponsor can display a product in use. The CBS scenic artists wanted a resilient flooring that would appear attractive and yet be durable enough to stand the rigors of scenery shifting and the comings and goings of cast, crew and guests. So they turned to Armstrong Cork Co., alternate sponsor The Danny Kaye Show (Wednesday 10-11 p.m. EDT). Armstrong obliged and the nimble feet of Mr. Kaye, the Tony Charmoli Dancers and all the others will be spotlighted on 715 glistening squares of Vistelle Corlon Tile. the production of such programs. lack Lynn, vice president in charge of programing for Metropolitan Broadcasting Television, said the current status of off-network programing is persuading station groups to produce more of their own shows and to seek product from world-wide sources. He noted that Metropolitan recently bought a two-hour Joan Sutherland concert from TCN in London, and in 1963 produced eight special programs, including one on Joe Louis which is being syndicated. TV series on 'Sea Power' A series of 65 half-hour TV programs, Sea Power, is being produced for Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. (Group W) by wjz-tv Baltimore in cooperation with the United States Naval Academy and the Department of the Navy. The series, a study of navies and naval warfare, will be broadcast early next year on the five Group W stations and on other stations through syndication. BROADCASTING, September 30, 1963 NEGRO ON 'HAZEL' Possible sticky problem solved by Screen Gems shift By transferring Otis Greene, assistant to Ben Harsh, production manager of Columbia Pictures, to Screen Gems, Columbia's TV subsidiary, as production liaison on the Hazel series which Screen Gems produces for broadcast on NBC-TV, the Columbia-Screen Gems management quietly prevented what could have been a sticky situation. The National Association for. the Advancement of Colored People had made demands on the Hollywood producers of filmed programs for television and theatrical exhibition and the craft unions involved that at least one Negro be included in each production crew. The NAACP had set as its target date for putting its demand into effect the start of filming of Hazel this fall (today, Sept. 30). If Hazel did not have at least one Negro member, the NAACP said, various actions would be taken by the organization, including a "selective buying campaign" against Hazel's sponsor, the Ford Motor Co. Naturally Screen Gems did not want any such campaign put into motion. But the unions, not the production company, control the make-up of the technical crews. However, the company can assign a man to the crew at the executive level and that is what Screen Gems has done. Oh, yes, Mr. Greene is a Negro. How the NAACP will proceed with the other shows now in production at the various Hollywood studios is not known. James L. Tolbert, president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch of the NAACP, who on several previous occasions had made it clear that the focus on Hazel was merely to provide a date by which all crews were to have Negro members, was not available for comment on Thursday, following the Screen Gems announcement of the transfer of Mr. Green to the Hazel staff. Promise Co-operation ■ On Tuesday evening, Mr. Tolbert and Morris T. Johnson, legal counsel of the NAACP branch, met with George Sidney, president of the Directors Guild of America, and a group of DGA officers and members, at a three-hour meeting at which Mr. Sidney assured the Negro group officials that DGA will do everything possible to insure the proper portrayal of the Negro in television and the movies. Charles Boren, executive vice president of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, who also attended the meeting, reported on recent improvements in job opportunities for Negroes in Hollywood. "In the past two months," he said, "the number of Negroes registered at Central Casting has increased from 45 to 106 and we have told them to register 25 more. The studios have ordered their people wherever possible to use more Negroes in motion pictures and on television. We can do a great deal here to alleviate the racial conflict in this country. It is a long and hard job but we must see it through," he concluded. AP radio-TV board elects officers The AP Radio and Television Association board of directors, meeting last week in New York, voted to retain the existing schedule of expanded fiveminute news summaries on the AP broadcast news wire. The service reaches approximately 2,400 radio and TV stations. The board's decision followed a report by a fact-finding committee, which said that 35% of 700 stations that answered a survey voted for retention of the expanded summaries. The fact-finding committee also reported that returns from another survey showed that sports scripts are the most widely used features on the AP broadcast wire. On the basis of the feature survey, the board urged that all existing daily features should be retained, and it recommended that further studies be made in regard to the content of market scripts. The board also recommended that the AP broadcast desk experiment with a compromise solution concerning the use of datelines on individual items in news summaries. Directors of the association at the meeting were Ken Nybo, kbmy Billings, Mont.; Paul Adanti, when-tv, Syracuse; retiring association president Dwight Martin, wdsu New Orleans; F. O. Carver, wsjs Winston-Salem, N. C; Jim Bormann, wcco Minneapolis; Carl Lee, wkzo-tv Kalamazoo, Mich.; Tom Eaton, wtic Hartford; AP radio-TV news editor John Aspinwall; Jim Howe, wira Fort Pierce, Fla.; Louis J. Kramp, AP assistant general manager; Joe Cleary, wesb Bradford, Pa.; Tom Bostic, kima Yakima, Wash.; new president Bob Schmidt, kays Hays, Kan.; John Thompson, krca(tv) Los Angeles; Dave Kelly, kdka-tv Pittsburgh; Dan Kops, wavz New Haven, Conn.; Gene Shumate, krxk Rexburg, Idaho, and Frank Gaither, wsb Atlanta. Messrs. Eaton, Lee, Carver and Thompson, were elected vice presidents for their districts. Mr. Kramp was named secretary and Mr. Aspinwall was re-elected assistant secretary. Robert Booth, AP treasurer, was re-elected treasurer of the radio and television association. 55