Sponsor (Nov 1946-Oct 1947)

Hooper's confidential video survey for CBS, which was released to the press in part, was so pro-tele vision that the network decided not to release the entire report, despite the fact that sportswise WCBS-TV stood up well in the figures. This to a degree duplicates the figureslocked-in-the-safe policy which followed completion of the N. W. Ayer-GoodyearNBC TV survey. Sets in use were over 50 per cent during the entire CBS survey period, and reached as high as 68 during certain programs. The anti-television camp which tries to explain away the present TV audience with "it's the novelty that gets 'em" found it difficult to account for a sponsorrecognition figure of 75 per cent for one program and an average of 6.2 viewers per viewing set. Regardless of the fact that few people in radio are anxious for TV to grow too fast until networking is an accomplished fact the medium is developing faster than any other in the history of advertising. The third Washington station (the Washington Star's WTVW) promises to be on the air in October but January 1 is probably a closer estimate. The latter date also is a fair guess for Baltimore's second TV outlet, WMAR. Although promised for "some time this fall" Philadelphia's WFIL-TV, Fort Worth's KCPNTV, Richmond's WTVR, Cleveland's WEWS, and Milwaukee's WTMJ-TV will be lucky to be on regular schedules by February 1948. With GE in actual television set production now it's expected that Schenectady's WRGB may go commercial in March 1948 if not before. Commercial operation will mean better pay for the staff and a professional approach to the program job, which has been handled on an experimental basis up to this time. TV is still somewhat worried about producing direct sales and will continue to be worried about that until there are enough receivers in use to deliver millions of viewers — although millions are not a necessity for profitable visual broadcast advertising. Of greatest FM interest to the Federal Communications Commission engineers in the past few weeks has been the new FM Pilotuner. FCC'ers have had the tiny unit under the toughest tests they know of and while they are not ready to give it a special governmental blessing, there has been less talk of another shift in FM channels since the set has been available. In New York the Pilotuner was shown to the consumer and trade press by the manufacturer, Pilot Radio Corporation, under no special auspices. In Washington the presentation had the blessing of WGAY-FM, WINX-FM, and WWDCFM. Most other presentations will be made under station sponsorship because FM may find its first real consumer acceptance through the introduction of the low-priced Pilotuner. Typical of conditions all over the nation during the summer (only more so) is the high degree of hot weather static which makes listening virtually impossible even a few miles out of town for some stations. Recently some men living at Indian Head, Md., 25 to 30 miles south of the District of Columbia, sent a spokesman up to see Ben Strouse, manager of WWDC. They were baseball fans and they couldn't hear the night games over WWDC in their homes. The spokesman presented a petition bearing 92 signatures. Mr. Strouse was sorry but he told them he was not the FCC and he couldn't extend the night service range of the AM station. However he suggested that the spokesman borrow one of the station's FM sets and listen to the games over WWDC-FM. He and 25 others listened to the next game on the borrowed set. Result, the spokesman bought the set he had borrowed and decided to become an FM radio dealer. On July 15 WQXQ, FM sister station of WQXR, New York started on a fulltime schedule, transmitting all the programs heard over the AM station. WQXR is the first standard broadcast station to make all its programs available to FM listeners. It is continuing to broadcast on the old FM band as well as the new to give 100 per cent service to FM'ers. This move is a forerunner of what is expected to happen on all AM stations that have FM affiliates, when union musical problems are overcome. Advertising agency inquiries on availabilities on FM stations, which were noted last month in the Fall Facts edition of sponsor, started turning into business in July when Young & Rubicam bought Report to the People, a Monday-throughFriday 6:30-7 p. m. program on WFMZ, Allentown, Pa. The program started August 4 and will be under active supervision to test the efficacy of the campaign. The station feels that the program will produce and wants to prove its results to all who use the air to advertis e When no scheduled television programs are on the air accidental viewers late at night or in the wee hours are apt to see pages and pages of designs moving across their receiver screens. If it were possible to stop them long enough to see one frame (30 complete pictures [frames] are seen on a video receiver in one second) they would see a page of type broadcast by RCA in its experiments with ultrafax on the regular television wave band. American Type Founders are said to be developing a type face that will be clearer than any existing now when transmitted into the home via fax. First special advertising for fax is being prepared experimentally by one of the top agencies in New York. They will use it in private transmissions for staff and a limited number of clients. The feeling in the little group working on the idea is that fax will be able to do a job that neither sound nor visual broadcasting will accomplish ... to quote one of the copy men on the project: "It's fun, but if it works, what it's going to do to present advertising concepts won't be fun." AUGUST 1947 51