Sponsor (Nov 1946-Oct 1947)

The "Talent Scouts" trio reaches the "on mike" audition stage Two competitors on Adam Hats' "Big Break" are coached by Ray Bloch general stirring up town pride and promotion. Thus far the towns canvassed have not been given the razzle-dazzle that the Bowes men turned on but the pace is to be intensified once the hot weather has been turned off and the fall hat-buying season is under way. Arthur Godfrey's Talent Hunt has no big exploitation plans, depending almost entirely on the Godfrey personality and the professional quality of entertainment. Bessie Mack, who screens the hopefuls who want to show their stuff on Talent Hunt, handled this chore for Major Bowes and knows just what she's trying to find for the program. Showmen still feel, however, that Godfrey is going to have to come up with something besides his drawl and professional-sounding talent if he's to lead the refurbished amateur parade. Mutual's plans for an amateur program are patterned after the Bowes formula with Bob Reid, former major-domo for Bowes, heading the package. As sponsor goes to press there's no signature to a contract and Reid in the meantime is doing a little piano program of his own on MBS, marking time. Michaels' Fox Amateur Hour is very much like the "get the hook" entertainment of vaudeville's heyday. So futile is the talent sometimes that the sponsor found it necessary to remove the broadcast from the theater stage and broadcast from a studic in the theater building. Theater audiences in Brooklyn, where the Fox Theater is located, were coming prepared to throw things when they didn't approve of what the amateurs were doing, and the catcalls were sometimes more colorful than broadcastable. Sachs' Amateur Hour, starting its 14th year this month, made its debut in the windows of Sachs' store on Chicago's South Halsted Street. Police and traffic regulations changed that routine fti a few weeks and it has since been broadcast from an auditorium at 64th and Green Streets, the studio "A" of station WENR, and for special programs from the Civic Opera House, which seats 4,000. Sachs', like Michaels', is a credit clothing house, but Michaels' sells everything from underwear to washing machines while Sachs' dees its major business in clothing, and uses broadcasting as its major advertising medium, having a daily 15-minute piano program as well as its amateur presentation, on WENR. Of the over 50 significant amateur shows scheduled for this fall more than half will be sponsored by time-payment clothing, furniture, or jewelry stores. Apparently local-talent-opportunity presentations appeal primarily to those at the economic level which patronizes timepayment retailers. The other 25 or so are to be sponsored by retailers, many of them giant markets. Few amateur programs were listed as available for sale to national or regional sponsors in this NAB Evaluation issue's report of local programs available for sponsorship because most stations feel that they're the type of program that should have the advertiser right on the ground to take the plaudits or the rap. That's not true, however, of the new type of amateur appeal that has been developing during the past six months, the Do You Want to Be a Disk Jockey? kind of program. From WNEW, New York, to KFWB, Hollywood, there's hardly an area that hasn't at least one disk-spinning talent-opportunity spieling session. Even WHN (N.y.) opportunity seekers