NBC transmitter (Oct-Dec 1944)

2 NBC Transmitter VOL. tO OCTOBER, 1944 No. 1 NBC Transmitter Published. Monthly by the ijjs National Broadcasting Company RCA Building, Radio City, N. Y. HAPPY RETURNS Not without some nostalgic fondness for bygone days — a sure sign of advancing age — this writer remembers Presidential elections before radio came into its own. We remember standing opposite a newspaper office on Election Night in 1912 with scarcely room to breathe in the milling crowd. A revolving rag sign slowly and painfully brought the returns. Enterprising newspapers devised schemes to give the final results. Green rockets meant the election of Woodrow' Wilson, red rockets that William Howard Taft was reelected and white rockets that Theodore Roosevelt had smashed precedent and would serve a third term. On Election Night, 1944, listeners from coast to coast will sit before their radios — in the comfort of their homes — to receive the most comprehensive Presidential returns ever attempted on the air. As detailed in the story in this issue of The Transmitter, NBC, on November 7, will go “all-out” to give the nation speedy, accurate returns. The network will remain on the air until the Presidential race is definitely decided. Radio City’s huge Studio 8-H will be the nerve center of the complete coverage. Giant charts will be kept up to-the-minute by all leading wire services so that commentators can have the very latest figures before them. NBC’s ace news voices have been assigned special election coverage tasks to assure the expert flow and interpretation of returns as they come in. Sidelights to the actual ballot count will also be covered, special men being assigned to the major parties’ candidates on Election Night. The continuity of broadcasting the returns will not prevent the voices of usual Tuesday night favorites being heard. However, the entertainers will be woven directly into the broadcasts, their appearances being keyed to the Election Night coverage. MOVIES, RADIO AND NEWSPAPERS BACK UP STAR PARADE’S BANDBOX CAMPAIGN CHICAGO.— Motion picture trailers in nearly 1,000 houses plus a basic hardhitting newspaper campaign in station cities are features of NBC’s third annual Parade of Stars campaign for 1944-45. Plans for the promotion were outlined to NBC station representatives at the NAB conference in Chicago by Niles Trammell, president; William S. Hedges, vice-president in charge of stations, and Charles P. Hammond, director of advertising and promotion. Much more comprehensive in scope than anything the company has done before to promote its annual star parade, the campaign is based on successful formulas developed during the last two years, plus a mass of suggestions from station management, plus the ingenuity of Hammond and his associates. Use of motion picture trailers on a mass scale is an entirely new venture in radio advertising promotion. The trailers are composed of scenes taken from motion picture productions in which top NBC name talent has appeared, and the campaign is keyed to run thesepromotional trailers in a minimum of 117 NBC affiliated station cities. There will be one new trailer a week over a period of four weeks starting in mid-October, playing before a minimum estimated audience of 30,000,000 persons. This portion of the campaign will be entirely underwritten by NBC, but it is expected that additional showings will be undertaken by affiliated stations in their coverage areas. This year’s NBC-financed newspaper advertising campaign will be extended over the last quarter of 1944 as compared with the two-week campaign undertaken last season. The company-financed portion of this campaign will be confined to daily newspapers in NBC managed and operated station cities and production points to reach a circulation of 20,000,000 persons. As in case of the motion picture trailers, extensive advertising also will be undertaken by the affiliated stations. Also for the first time, NBC presented several network programs as a direct aid to the campaign this season. The broadcasts featured top NBC talent from daytime and nighttime schedules with pickups from all the principal production centers of the network. The Parade of Stars Bandbox, a collection of promotion material covering every commercial program on the network, followed by material covering public service and sustaining features, has been sent to all NBC affiliates for local use. This was described in last month's Transmitter. Football Sponsored on FM Jobs for Institute “Grads" MILWAUKEE, WIS. So far as is known, WMFM. Milwaukee, will be the first FM station to broadcast a complete season of play-by-play football. The Wadham’s Oil Company, for 16 consecutive years the sponsor of play-byplay broadcasts of University of Wisconsin and Green Bay Packer games on WTMJ. recognizing the increased importance of FM. this year added WMFM to its schedule. Russ Winnie, veteran WTMJ sportscaster, will start his 16th consecutive season broadcasting Wisconsin and Packer games for Wadham’s on WTMJ, and launch his first season broadcasting the same games on WMFM. CHICAGO.— More than 50 per cent of the student body available for employment on completion of the third annual NBC-Northwestern University Summer Radio Institute has been absorbed by the industry less than two weeks after the close of the session, according to Judith Waller, co-director of the institute and public service director for the NBC Central division. Offers of jobs were still coming in from radio stations all over the country as The Transmitter went to press. Of the 110 enrolled in the 1944 institute, 40 signified their intention of accepting employment at the close of the sixweek course. Twenty-three definite placements were announced.