Sponsor (Nov 1946-Oct 1947)

COMMERCIAL REVIEWS (Continued from page 16) It actually has been proved to increase Sunday night movie-going for Interstate. PROMOTION: All the motion picture promotion devices are used to sell Showtime, from trailers to lobby displays. Newspaper advertising and window cards are also part of the program build-up. Since stage and music names are always booked for the airing when they play the Interstate Circuit, there's an air of expectancy about each program which makes foi good promotion. CREDITS: Conrad Brady, motion picture publicist for Interstate, prepares the continuity on this show and while the commercials are (as noted befcre) too "trailerish" it's still productive. Agency is Segal Advertising Agency of Houston, Texas. VISI-QUIZ WPTZ, Philadelphia, Philco TV, Thursdays, 9-9:30 p.m., est PROGRAM: As entertainment this must be rated low in the visual quiz scale. Don Saxon handles the quizmaster chore as though he were still a nightclub mc. That's sour when it comes into the home. None of the contestants were amusing, which throws the burden of making any quiz a show right back in the interlocutor's lap. Basic idea of having the home audience send in their names so that the studio audience member who is to act out the question can pick out of a jar the name of the person who is to answer the question is okay. Also the idea of having duplicate prizes for the studio and home participants, which both get if the quiz answerei (who is called on the phone at home) gets the answer right, is fine. But if the performer who carries the burden on the show isn't good there's still no program. Just, however, to underline the fact that television set owners are fans, according to viewers' program-rating cards, 62 per cent of the Philadelphia area viewers tune this show and 84 per cent of these call the show "excellent" or "good." COMMERCIAL: Sears, Roebuck & Co. achieves a 100 per cent advertising impact. The contestant, to obtain his or her prize, has to open a giant Sears catalogue. When the prize, which is an item from the catalogue, is seen and the camera dollies in to telecast a close-up of the prize, an invisible announcer tells all its sales points. Variation was lacking in Don Saxon's sending of the member of the studio audience over to the catalogue but in spite of repetition, the viewing of the prizes held viewers' attention. TIME: There's nothing on the visual air in Philadelphia but WPTZ, so picture competition is nil. Sound broadcasting at 9 p.m. Thursdays while not having top rating shows has three that do hold their audiences, Dick Haymes, Kraft Music Hall, and the second half of American Town Meeting of the Air. As noted before, tele vision set owners are fans and unless it's Bob Hope or Fibber McGee or a like attraction they stay viewing good, bad, or indifferent picture fare. PROMOTION: Every member of the television audience in Philadelphia and trading area received an announcement of this show when it first hit the air and 98 per cent of the set owners sent in their names and phone numbers in order that they might participate in the show. Naturally this can't be done in New York and Schenectady where the show is now being seen via NBC. It'll be interesting to discover the appeal of a visual quiz where the audience watches another area participate without being able to do so itself. CREDITS: Ernest Walling, new program manager of WPTZ, directs the program. The show is a package designed by Raymond Aarons of Benjamin Eshleman Co., Sears' Philadelphia ad-agency, with Raymond E. Nelson, acting as video consultant. T-DAY WNBT, New York, NBC TV, Sunday 9 9:30 p.m., est. PROGRAM: A consumer showing of any new line, whether it be television receivers, as this was, or fashions, has to be staged and well produced no matter how great the talent. This wasn't. NBC should know by this time that while Edward Sobol is television's number one dramatic producer, his handling of variety shows consistently touches bottom. T-Day was no exception. Sobol did absolutely nothing with what the agency, J. Walter Thompson, handed him, and the interplay between Ben Grauer, as the NBC tour guide, Cathy O'Donnell. movie starlet, and Robert Merrill, Met opera star, was writing at its television worst. Also, in order not to steal any audience away from radio programs, they used a teaser approach from 8 to 9 p.m., which did not use the guest stars' names (Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Earl Wilson, and Peter Donald.) As several in the audience at NBC viewing of the evening's television fare said, "Put up or shut up." COMMERCIAL1 There were so many good sales points for the new RCA television "Eye Witness" table models that it could have been a commercial writer's paradise. A video receiver that doesn't require vertical or horizontal aligning is manna from heaven, and since every home receiver that was tuned to the program had to be set for both horizontal and vertical position as well as for clarity and brightness, the program could have been used with the greatest of ease to sell not only viewers who didn't have a receiver themselves, but even those who did. Practically all the sales points were glossed over. Since it would also have been possible to show sets in action, instead of just blank tube faces, everyone wondered who planned the show and who wrote the continuity. Commercially this was a waste of time, just as it was as entertainment. (Please turn to page 35) Th» Hhrijtian Science Monitor "Well. If It isn't the quiz kid!" DECEMBER, 1946 19