Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1964)

scheduled. In some areas Falstaff will be competing for baseball audience with Anheuser-Busch, which has bought a quarter of the ABC-TV series. Looks like CBS-TV will take care of Falstaff in still another way: the six National Football League exhibition games during August. Falstaff's also a regional participant in all the National Football League's post season championship and bowl games. How ABC-TV is selling the Saturday series: $110,000 for a quarter of 24 Saturday games and two holiday games. Figures $22,000 per commercial minute. There'll be 20 commercial minutes per broadcast, this including the pre and post-game programs. P.S.: N. W. Ayer still battling in behalf of client Narragansett beer against the Boston White Sox dropping Narragansett to clear the way for the ABCTV deal. Pre-Christmas success saga Tip to the TvB: there's a hot little success story on tap at Gulton Industries, which turns out long-life flashlights, cigaret lighters, etc. The skeleton facts: bought eight scattered night commercial minutes on ABC-TV, starting after Thanksgiving; made a commercial with actor John Williams. By the end of five shots Gulton's inventory was cleaned out. Backlog of orders resulted in Gulton putting production lines on 24-hour operation. the sales of double-edged blades: research has revealed that they use them more than men. However, Gillette will go on preserving its sports image by continued sponsoring of what it deems such "blue chip" events as the World Series, the Rose Bowl and the NCAA football games, with costs at somewhat under $7 million. Billings for the nighttime entertainment will likely run over the $20 million mark, as compared to $15 million for this season. Middle bracket up 13 percent One of the network tv rating anomalies of the current nighttime season is this: both the average rating and the number of shows in the middle rating brackets went up. Usually when the average rating takes a hike the percentage of shows in the middle bracket slides off. Contributing to this season's anomaly is the fact that there was but a single program, namely Bonanza, that landed in the 30-or-better rating bracket. In the previous season there were four shows in that classification. Apply the November 1 1 NTl as a base for each year, the evening rating level picture for the past three years comes out as follows: RATING BRACKET 1964 1963 1962 Over 20 rating 36% 41% 27% 10-20 rating 58 45 58 Under 10 rating 6 14 15 NO PROGRAMS 111 105 115 AVE. EVE. RTG. 18.4 18.1 17.1 The women in Gillette's future Look for Gillette come the 1965-66 season to continue veering its nighttime network tv participation toward the female audience. In other words, whatever Gillette buys at night will have a predominantly built-in feminine appeal. Compared to a few years back, the company's merchandising approach constitutes a new ballgame. It's knee-deep in the toiletries field. Gillette has Right Guard deodorant that it's bent on promoting as an item for women as well as men. As the company expands its toiletries line for men, it becomes more dependent on the distaff side for success, since most of men's toiletries are bought by women as gifts. Blandishing the female consumer is also important to Gillette in Uncle Ben, M&M to NHS? Nobody will be more surprised than Ted Bates if a report going the rounds of Madison Avenue turns out true. The report: Forest Mars, who heads up the merged Mars, Inc., and Food Manufacturers, Inc., is assigning FMI's M&M candy and Uncle Ben's rice to Needham, Harper & Steers. The M&M and Uncle Ben accounts, jointly, bill at least $7 million ($6.5 million of it in spot tv). Needham, Louis & Brorby, which just merged with Doherty, Clifford, Steers & Shenfield, has handled the Mars account for many years. Possible contributing factor to the reported switch: Needham would now have a fully staffed media buying operation CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE December 28, 1964 21