Sponsor (Nov 1947-Oct 1948)

Spot ilnnonncemente can be more effective Station breaks do a better job for advertising and public ivhen they fit into their surroundings spot Some stations do a good job with spot announcements, some don't. And what determines how "good" the job is is not the quantity of listening, BMB coverage fig' ures, or similar statistics, but the stations' advertising effectiveness. More and more advertisers are becoming aware of the fact that sales results differ amazingly on stations supposedly covering markets of the same size with the same power, at the same cost, and in theory with the same audience impact. Spot availability information has taken on a new dimension. How the commercial is handled is becoming just as important as where it's used. A growing number of stations are handling spot announcements as though they were something besides income-producing evils. Even transcribed announcement spots are scheduled, introduced, and signed off in program fashion. Live announcements on a station with the new look at commercials reflect, even when of the irritant variety, an integrated feeling which avoids making them stand out like a blot on broadcast advertising's escutcheon. It has long been the feeling of men like wOpy. Where an announcement i$ to go into a participating program the mc usually knows better how to phrase it to fit his personality than does any agency. G. Emerson Markham, broadcasting head of General Electric in Schenectady, that the public's negative reaction to commercials in general, and spot announcements in particular, can be traced to their handling and acceptance by the stations. As long ago as two years he started studying the problem. Since a great part of a station's income comes from station break and other announcement forms, he didn't feel justified in refusing this form of business. Moreover he didn't feel that listeners instinctively disliked advertising but rather that they disliked what broadcasting was doing with it. Ergo — develop a new approach. Since many commercials were spotted on participating programs, the first regulation established was the rewriting of all Scheduling: it's often wiser to permit stations to place spots where they think they'll do the best than to Insist upon specific availabilities. live announcements to fit the mood and personality of the program conductor. This was done whether the program was a women's participating program, a disk jockey segment, or a catch-all type of show. For transcribed announcements, another regulation prescribed a few words of lead-in and a word or two of lead-out, the copy to be in the program mood. These regulations solved the problem of spot commercials on programs designed to carry them. They left still unsolved the problem of what to do with announcements in station-break time between programs. Markham decided upon a number of policy rules to clean up the station-break problem. First, announcements were not to be used between programs which were out of mood with them. No doublespotting — no announcements would be placed back to back. Sometimes refusal of a station break to an advertiser who wanted it because of the large audience reached by programs on both sides of the break caused ill-will. Most advertisers, however, discovered that another station break period could produce good results too and came to realize that they too profit by selective spotting of their own as well as all the station's announcements. WGY has had letters from listeners who have noticed the difference in commercial handling — and advertisers are collecting upon that favorable atmosphere. One of the first stations to realize the impact of integration of spot commercials was WNEW (N. Y.) with Martin Block. Until recently it did nothing about integrating the hundreds of its other commercial announcements. Lately program vp Ted Cott has been trying to show announcement advertisers how they can make their commercials more effective by recording them in different moods to fit the program surroundings. It is Cott's feeling that a singing commercial to be effective should be done in as many musical moods as possible. If the same appeal IVIOOQ. When spots are recorded in various musical tempos and types, they'll Rt into block sequences and hold the listeners. were handled in Latin rhythm, in bebop, in swing, and in sweet phrasing, then it would be possible to integrate the spot into any type of program or have it adjoin any type of program. "That way," says Cott, "the listeners aren't jarred each time a commercial comes up. If the commercial is in harmony with its setting it won't arouse the automatic negative response it otherwise might." How far a station can go in making commercials part of the program is best shown by a show scheduled at 4:30 p.m. over Chicago's WGN by Two Ton Baker. Baker writes and spins little stories which build to climaxes that use transcribed {Please turn to page 46) MAY 1948 31