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?|^ Success Story: NBC Television Films 'n March 3, 1953, the National Broadcasting Company established the NBC Film Division as a major operating division of the company to handle an in- creasingly important business in film syndication. At- testing to its lively growth in the ensuing three years, the Division during recent weeks has: — reported a record sales year for 1955; — moved to larger quarters on Fifth Avenue in New York; — appointed a new advertising agency; —■ been transferred to the Kagran Corporation, NBC's wholly-owned subsidiary, and taken the new name "NBC Television Films." The transfer to Kagran, whose activities previously were limited to licensing and merchandising, is de- scribed by NBC President Robert W. Sarnoff as a move that "will permit more efficient operation and provide greater flexibility for NBC's syndicated film business." Having started virtually from scratch three years ago in the face of heavy competition, NBC Television Films now controls 17 successful TV film series, op- erates two streamlined and self-contained film exchanges, and administers the largest library of stock film footage in the television industry. Domestically, 12 NBC Tele- vision Films programs have been sold in more than 100 markets, and 14 programs are sold in the New York market alone. Sales in 1955 were 20 percent higher than in 1954. The increase is attributed not only to new productions, which were quickly and profitably distributed through a series of major regional sales, but also to continued brisk activity in such perennial best sellers as Dangerous Assignment, Badge 714, Life of Riley. Victory at Sea, and Hopalong Cassidy. The new productions commissioned in 1955 included three TV film series of 39 half-hour episodes each: Steve Donovan, Western Marshal, starring Douglas Kennedy and Eddy Waller, filmed in Hollywood by Vi-Bar Productions; The Great Gildersleeve, starring Willard Waterman, produced by Matthew Rapf at the Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood; and Crunch and Des, based on Philip Wylie's popular series of Saturday Evening Post stories, starring Forrest Tucker and filmed in Bermuda by Bermuda Productions, Ltd., and RKO- Pathe, Inc. Sales abroad were significant both in the light of today's revenue and in the creation of a good atmos- phere for future sales to countries with rapidly grow- ing television audiences. Inner Sanctum and the half-hour Hopalong Cassidy series were sold to Associated Redif- fusion, Ltd., and Roy Rogers to Associated Television for showing on British commercial TV — and are re- ported immediately to have won favor with the British TV audience. The Visitor and Life of Riley were sold to the BBC. Through its Australian representatives, Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd., NBC Tele- vision Films sold seven programs in Sydney and Mel- bourne for broadcast next fall. The NBC Film Library, which now includes about 21 million feet of cross-indexed and catalogued film, plus 14 million feet of March of Time library stock, received and processed in 1955 nearly 1,000,000 feet of 16-mm and more than 700,000 feet of 35-mm news film, amounting to some 800 hours of film. Miles of film — a typical storage aisle in the NBC Television Film Library. 30 RADIO AGE