Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1962)

WIP PIPES A LIVELY TUNE AT FORTY Philadelphia's community-minded pioneer radio station, acquired two years ago by Metropolitan Broadcasting, is out to become a dominant force in its market. PAULSEN & GLASCOCK When it was over, 113,000 postcards RUST & LEAMING On tape: Immediacy, authority "Dadio," observes Harvey Glascock, "is an emotional 1 thing. A viewer can rattle off the names of his favorite television programs but he's fairly indifferent about which channels carry them. On the other hand, radio audiences identify personally and strongly with stations, dote on them or get sore at them, depending on their own tastes and how well a station's programming satisfies them." Glascock speaks with authority. As vice president and general manager of Philadelphia radio station WIP it's his job to ardently woo the biggest audience he can attract, and the rating services indicate he is doing an impressive job. Although radio's product line is intangible and ephemeral entertainment, there's no doubt that producing the sound is big business for many radio stations including WIP and its New York-headquartered corporate parent. Metropolitan Broadcasting, a division of Metromedia Inc., which rang up $50 million in sales last year for its radio, television and billboard empire. New directions. WIP, Philadelphia's first radio station, started 40 years ago in the music department of Gimbel Brothers department store with the hope that crystal set owners would be intrigued enough by the signal to come and look at the transmitter and, perhaps, buy a piano while they were there. A half hour after WIP started broadcasting, Strawbridge's had a station on the air and other department stores quickly followed suit. The phenomenon might not have sold many pianos, but it quickly demonstrated that radio was more than a novelty. Today 21 area radio stations cover the dial. The business nationally grosses over $600 million. A sign of radio's increasing value is evidenced by the $2.5 million figure that former station manager Benedict Gimbel Jr. (now a Metromedia director) and a syndicate of investors paid Gimbel Brothers for WIP in 1958, and the subsequent $4.5 million the syndicate received from Metropolitan Broadcasting when it acquired the station two years later. Vice president Glascock feels that the property is worth much more today on the current market, but Metropolitan, of course, has no intention of selling it. Indeed, WIP has become, under Glascock's guidance, one of the most valuable radio properties in the country. The station has upped its audience by 25%. Declaration of independence. WlP's method of operation has no parallel with conventional network radio operations. Metromedia president and board chairman John W. Kluge insists that each one of the properties owned by Metro be independently managed in its own community (much the way newspaperdom's Sam Newhouse runs his publishing empire). Thus, each station in the chain is able to develop the format that its local management thinks will best serve its market. Kluge's organization is consequently one of the most diversified in the communications field. It includes television outlets in Washington, Kansas City, New York, Sacramento. Peoria and Decatur, 111. In addition to WIP in Philadelphia, it also owns radio stations in New York, Cleveland and Kansas City. Metromedia's WRUL in New York is the only commercial American radio station which specializes in transmitting to the European and South American market. Rounding off the Metromedia operations, at least for the present, is the sprawling Foster and Kleiser, the largest outdoor advertising operation on the West Coast. When Metromedia acquired WIP two years ago it brought Glascock in from Cleveland where he had built up the firm's WHK to the number one station in the market, gave him a free hand to do what he thought necessary in Philadelphia to develop the new property.