NAEB Newsletter (Mar 1958)

towners, and the fascination lives on. A recurrent problem arises when you are distribu- ting one story to 50 or 100 hometowns. To economize on manpower in the PR office you may want to at¬ tach a list of the names under the covering story. Stewart Howe at Illinois Institute of Technology cautions that this practice is self-defeating. Quoth Howe, “Our experiments indicate that when the same material is mailed without the attached list, and the names have been inserted onto the release, about 10 times as many publications use the material. Much better results recommend the extra time needed to individualize the releases . . He continues, “I am also dubious of a system which asks the individual to distribute a story about himself to the local press. Many will not know where to direct the material, nor how to evaluate the out¬ lets available; often it leads to waste and duplication; and frequently people are hesitant to expose them¬ selves in the role of seeking personal publicity.” Other views on hometowns, anyone? * * * * * One of the finest brochures we have seen on a broadcasting operation arrived recently from Japan. This Is NHK gives a pictorial story of the Japan Broadcasting Corp. There are sections on Radio, TV, International Service, Facilities, Surveys. The im- portance of broadcasting in Japan is revealed in this page 1 statement: “NHK’s total staff numbers 9,314.” * * * * * KUHT, Houston, sends out form letters to 20 local civic groups, offering to provide speakers for illustrated lectures on ETV. * * * * 45 - Ken Kager reports an effective seasonal tie-in used by KUOW, University of Washington. The sta¬ tion taped the Council of Churches’ huge Christmas concert Dec. 8 for delayed broadcast Christmas Eve. Live audience of 5,000 read about KUOW on the printed program; most churches announced the up¬ coming broadcast repeatedly; the press carried stories; and the station had a fine broadcast with strong local interest for Christmas Eve. * * * * * From John Sittig: WCBE, Columbus (Ohio) Board of Education, placed an attractive two-color brochure into each child’s grade card envelope. The brochure contained pictures well chosen to reveal WCBE’s facilities and operations; the back fold car¬ ried a message from Supt. of Schools to 70,000 homes urging parents to tune in. * * * * * From KVSC at Utah State comes this reminder from Dr. Burrell F. Hansen: Much of your total pub- licity-PR impact simply depends on making existing programs available to the widest possible audience. Hansen works in cooperation with commercial sta¬ tions to extend his programs far beyond the range of the school’s, own station. (And he’s got a powerful lot of geography to cover out thar, pod'ner!) He re¬ ports stations “very cooperative” and community interest high. NETWORK NEWS —Bob Underwood As an additional service to network members, we are considering serving as an ordering agent for any sta¬ tions wishing to obtain either mailing cases, tape boxes or tapes. Anyone interested in purchasing such materials through the network is invited to contact us for fur¬ ther details. There is no obligation to buy simply be¬ cause you inquire. The mailing cases, which we have made to order, may be obtained for approximately $2 each. The tape boxes run about 10c each, and the tapes about $2 each. Of course, we would not be able to quote final prices until we had some indication of the quan¬ tity needed for each item. If you are interested in this idea, please contact me stating your interest in either mailing cases, tape boxes, tapes or all or any combination of the three. We will be pleased to take it from there. I look for¬ ward to hearing from you. Please do not forget the tape returns. RADIO-TV PLACEMENT IMPROVES AT U. OF I. A notable upswing in radio-television job listings since 1956 was reported by the Placement Service of the University of Illinois College of Journalism and Com¬ munications. In 1956, the service listed 42 radio-TV jobs as com¬ pared with 119 in 1957. Of these 119 offers, 37 were in the area of news, 24 in announcing, 18 in continuity, 10 in production-direction, 8 in time sales, 6 in teach¬ ing and 16 in miscellaneous areas of broadcasting. PROMOTION IDEAS: Wisconsin State Broadcasting Service provides 2" x 6" bookmarks to libraries, book stores, etc. One side, lists Wisconsin State Radio Council stations. Re¬ verse lists the day and hour of seven literature series. They distributed 35,000 of these in one month! MARCH, 1958 3