Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1960)

bill doesn'l equal t h« agency's idea of its liability." Spokesmen For agencies that have I alread) installed computer equipment, or who send computing jobs out to ' private service bureaus, have pre [< dieted that in the future, perhaps the bear future, the larger representatives will become mechanized and communication by punch-card will be j come a generally accepted business practice. For size and ability to spend do not limit the firm? that can now take advantage of the machines. Inde j pendent service bureaus using IBM, Remington Rand, and other equipment are available to any size agency, I rep firm or station. They charge by the hour. "Actually, there's no reason for a small agency to install expensive equipment,'" stated William O'Brien, information manager of the IBM Service Bureau Corp., a wholly j owned subsidiary of IBM. "In order I to get full utilization out of the com I puters, they should be going at the I barest minimum 40 hours a week," I he explained. "A smaller agency can, however, bring its work to us, or to any one of the many independent service bu j j reaus throughout the country. All the customer pays for is the time it takes us to do the job. He gets the i benefits of data processing from equipment he couldn't possibly install himself, and he gets it by the hour." Using one of these bureaus, the smaller agency can temporarily add to its staff the computers plus mathematicians, programers, engineers, I and method analysts. As IBM says, I they can handle "any kind of work I from the most complicated computa ; tion to a simple accounting analysis." I Agency research departments would also be well advised to automate their work. According to K&E's Salkind, "In the research department we have j automated, and the processing of sur l veys, for example, has become a rela ! ii\«l\ simple affair." Computation I and analysis, he said, is done at a speed "inconceivable a few years ago." Will what is inconceivable now be■ ome facl in the near future? Will the I machine take over, not where the time 1] buyer's job ends, but where it begins? i Please turn to page 62) ABC launches 'shortie' plugs on daytime video ^ Whitehall, Block charter participants in tv plan for advertiser to divide one minute into two commercials ^ Flexibility pleases agencies, but injury to programs feared; spot problem anticipated if fragments scattered \& redit ABC with another minor revolution in ways of selling daytime tv. This time it's separate commercials shorter than a minute. The fomenter of scattered minute* is off on a plan to allow advertisers who buy a quarter hour and run all three of their commercial minutes within that 15-minute period to divide one of them into two separate 30's or a 40 and a 20. First takers: Whitehall and Block Drug. The other networks, with varying degrees of reluctance, allow "piggybacks"— i.e. 30's back-to-back covering two brands of the same advertiser, but this is probably the first instance of four separate commer cials in a quarter hour, and the initial use of network 40's and 20's. ABC sees the new approach, which currently is sold only for the second quarter hour, as superior to piggybacking from a programing standpoint because the fourth commercial is placed after the closing credits. This way the viewer encounters only three commercial "jerks" during the main body of the program, as ABC TV daytime sales v.p. Ed Bleier puts it. Though the new plan is not expected to have as wide an appeal as scattered minutes, agency media officials feel it may fill the bill for advertisers with four or more non THEY DON'T GO ALONG WITH THE PLAN OVER-COMMERCIALIZATION is what Fred Houwink (I), general manager, WMAL-TV, Washington, sees in the additional commercial break provided; NBC's daytime sales director James Hergen not only agrees with Houwink, but finds a definite threat to the spot business and anticipates station trouble for ABC as a result. Houwink and other station men are especially concerned over repercussions if ABC allows advertisers to scatter 'shorties' 32 3 OCTOBER 1960