Sponsor (Jan-Mar 1962)

taint) among advertisers? • \\ ill the FCC undercut the stal>ilit\ of the business of advertising? • How will FCC action affect long-range ad planning? • What is Minou's attitude toward advertising and the free enterprise system? sponsor editors sel out last week to find the answers to some of these questions bothering the industry. The) found that virtuall) all top broadcast i xecutives and admen firmly believe that FCC Chairman Minow, based on present evidence, doesn't harbor a built-in advertising bias. Most broadcasters, it was found, do not consider the FCC the ogre it appeared to be when Minow first lashed out at the industry. With few exceptions, broadcasters today do not think the FCC is in a brazen conspiracy to kick the stuffings out of air advertising. Only a handful of broadcasters think Minow and his fellow regulators are bent on brass knuckling and handcuffing the broad Ad agency executives do not view with alarm FCC'S ATTITUDE toward broadcasting didn't change thinking or operation of Lennen & Newell, according to Nick Keesely, senior v. p. of agency's television department casting industry. In the final analysis, however, according to those queried, the question won't be answered fully until ABC, FCC chairman Minow's challenging remarks At the NAB Convention, 9 May 1961 "I believe in the free enterprise system." "I believe that most of television's problems stem from lack of competition. This is the importance of uhf to me: with more channels on the air, we will be able to provide every community with enough stations to offer service to all parts of the public. Programs with a mass market appeal required by mass product advertisers certainly will still be available. But other stations will recognize the need to appeal to more limited markets and to special tastes. In this way, we can all have a much wider range of programs." "I invite you to sit down in front of your television set . . . you will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom." At Commonwealth Club. San Francisco, 22 December 1961 "During the next decade, we are working to build a fourth network dividing its time between daytime programing for classrooms and nighttime programing for adults seeking intellectual and spiritual adventure rather than actionadventure." IN OPINION of Daniel A. Whitney, v.p. Reidl & Freede, the new FCC chairman doe1 seek taste in tv programing and has "no in tention of knocking out advertising per te CBS, and NBC upper echelon e\<< u tives descend on \\ ashington thi month to play leading roles in wha promises to be the last and mist dra matic scene in the FCC s epic-run ning hearings on network program ing procedures. The survey reveals, among othi things, that: • There is no basic disagrtemei within the industry or governmei as regards the broadcaster's ohjec tives. It was best summed up h NBC chairman Bobert W. Same in a recent utterance: "We all wai to offer the public more informatioi al programs, more actualities, moi children's programs, and so on. Tl question is the means. Some peop are impatient. They want more pr grams for minority groups — noi But. should we do it more slowK v the free enterprise system? Or I tempt to force it through gover ment order?" • The FCC is determined to mal infinitely greater use of the uhf cha' nels and hopes within the next fi years to see tv switch to the upp bands. Broadcasters point signi| canllv to Dr. Jerome B. WiesnJ former head of MIT's electronic j search laboratory and currently PH ident Kennedy's special science d visor who advocates an all-uhf rangement. Minow is familiar w Dr. Wiesner's suggestion hut -.r "First we'll have to complete the N 22 SPONSOR 8 .1 \M ARY 1*