The radio annual (1957)

Advertising Council Boasts Fine Public Service Record THE past year, in the area of public service broadcasting and advertising, was perhaps the most eventful and significant in over a decade. Certainly, it was The Advertising Council's biggest peacetime year. The volume of advertising contributed by advertising media and advertisers to public service projects reached the total of $149,069,000 as against the 1955 total of $120,000,000. Not since World War II has public service advertising reached such a high point. 0<=>0 And during this year broadcasters and their advertisers — local, regional and national — gave more support to more public interest information projects than they had in any previous year. They mounted the largest Register And Vote Campaign in history and closed 1956 by conducting the tremendously effective Hungarian Emergency Relief Campaign— all the while giving forceful assistance to 14 other vital public interest programs and 46 additional causes. This record includes only Advertising Council projects, and does not include hundreds of purely local community projects which radio and television stations assisted generously in their localities. Network and regional advertisers alone contributed in 1956 a total circulation of 10,612,353,000 radio and television home impressions to those campaigns supported by the Council (in 1955 the total was 6,174,667,000). These lOVi billion home impressions resulted from sponsored programs only. The additional circulation contributed by local stations and by network sustaining shows easily would double this figure. These estimates are based on ratings of individual programs, provided to the Council free by The A. C. Nielsen Company. A home impression is one message heard once in one home. While the scope of this public service is impressive, fortunately the campaign results also are impressive — results of which broadcasters can be proud. Here are but a few such results registered in 1956: The ACTION campaign stimulated 13,200 individual reauests for assistance. Sponsors of the BETTER SCHOOLS campaign reported 12 to 15 thousand local citizens committees working for better schools. Four years ago there were 17. By GORDON C. KINNEY Director of Radio and Television, The Advertising Council, Inc. PTA membership totals 10,130,000, an increase of 720,718 over the year before. The HUNGARIAN EMERGENCY RELIEF campaign successfully reached its goal of 5 million dollars for the Red Cross and l'/2 million CARE. The annual average of forest fires in recent years was 300,000. In 1956 it dropped to 166,000. The area burned dropped from 30,000,000 acres to 8,000,000 acres. In 1952 the enrollment of volunteers as plane spotters in the Ground Observer Corps was under 90,000. Today it is 400,000. In addition a million men and women have been trained as observers. In the 1956 drive, the Red Cross raised $84,950,756 and achieved a membership of 24,000,000 people. Two million $ 1 packages have been sent to hungry people as a result of the CARE Food Crusade. The greatest total vote in history was cast in 1956 — 62,118,936, as compared with the 1952 total of 61,351,919. A total of 80,158,364 registered in 1956, an increase in registration of 4,578,579 over 1952. During the ten years the Council has assisted on the STOP ACCIDENTS campaign, the traffic accident death rate per 100 million vehicle miles was reduced from 11.3 to a low of 6.3. Although selling U. S. Savings Bonds is an up-hill fight, holders of U. S. Savings Bonds reached an all-time high the past year. 40 miUion Americans now own E and H bonds worth 41 million dollars. 0<Z>0 From all indications the public relations of the Council, and through it the public relations of broadcasting, of advertising and of business, continue to forge ahead. Whereas, not too many years ago, certain groups in America — educators, clergymen and perhaps physicians — were critical of "advertising", today these very groups form perhaps the loudest cheering section for the mass communications media. 129