Ross reports -- television index. (1957)

Private Secretary, having finished its summer duty in re-run over the CBS net in evening time, starts network stripping tomorrow (26) over NBC as part of its Comedy Time, Monday thru Friday, 5-5 :30pm NYT . Arthur Lewis will produce a pilot for NBC based on Ring Lardner’s "You Know Me, Al, " the 1916 volume of baseball stor¬ ies which established the newspaperman as a humorist and/or satirist in the short story field. Abe Burrows wrote the pilot and will be head writer on the series if it takes. The original stories concerned a White Sox baseball pitcher . Four Star Films has two new Western series on its production schedule, despite the heavy criticism of the load of Westerns on TV. One is Doc Holliday, the other, The Tall Texan; both pilot scripts written by Aaron Spelling. The series will be pushed for January sale . David Susskind, head of Talent Associates, was quoted last week in Hollywood as saying that he has been approached by two agencies to prepare live shows for possible debut in January, to replace two film series that may get their cancellation after 13 weeks. Susskind reported that agency people told him they had seen the first films on the new series and the decision is being made even before the series take to the air. Helen Deutsch has been signed by NBC to head a staff of writers for the General Motors Fiftieth Anniversary Show, Nov 17 , Sunday, 9-ldpm NYT. Jess Oppenheimer will produce the two-hour color special. The NBC agreement with Miss Deutsch also covers three annual NBC-TV special projects and creation and development of a new weekly series. She is also free to continue with her motion picture script writing (in¬ cluding 13 years with M-G-M) . Boris Karloff will star in Tales of Frankenstein, a new series to be produced by Bryan Foy in partnership with Joseph Schenck Enter¬ prises for Screen Gems. Karloff will appear as host of the series and will star in some of the half-hour shows . Toots Camarata will be musical director for The Edsel Show over CBS, Oct 13, Sunday, 8-9pm NYT . Country Music Jubilee, pushed out of its ABC Saturday, 10pm spot, by The Mike Wallace Interview will expand from its present 8:30-9pm time to a full hour beginning Oct 5, 6-9pm NYT. Thus, ABC will have a spread of country and western music for one hour, followed by Lawrence Welk for an hour, topped by a tart non -musical nightcap from Mike Wallace, for Saturday evenings. Winston O’Keefe is producing the second of Screen Gems’ hour -and -a-half films for this season’s Playhouse 90. Lloyd Nolan will star in "The Glavanized Yankee," the story of a Union Army officer assigned to move a group of Confederate prisoners between two bases during the Civil War. James Whitmore will co-star with Nolan, playing an imprisoned Confederate officer. The script was written by Russell S. Hughes. The first Screen Gems Playhouse 90 film for the current season was "The Edge of Innocence," starring Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright, with playdate to be set . Kraft Television Theatre has been renewed over NBC for a year, effective Oct 2. It is the longest continuously running dramatic program on network tele¬ vision. KNXT(LA) is scheduling a basic television training course for the benefit of advertising agency and client personnel in the Los Angeles area, believed to be the first such undertaken by a television station. The first of six two-hour sessions is tentatively scheduled for mid -October. KNXT general manager Clark George sent letters to national and local advertising agency leaders inviting them to make the course available to agency and client personnel. General subjects to be covered are "The Basics of Television," "The Selling Side," "The Commercial Use of Tele¬ vision," and "The Production Side of Television." Within the general subjects, those taking the course will be familiarized with all fine points of local and net¬ work operations, live and film production, commercial production and trade merchan¬ dising. ROSS REPORTS MID-WEEK SPECIAL 9/25/57 Page 2