Sponsor (Nov 1948-June 1949)

%$$$&>. "Music, "the sage Longfellow remarked, "is the universal language of mankind. And good music, programmed always over WQXR and WQXR-FM, is the language that keeps more than half a million New York families constantly tuned to these stations. So constantly, indeed, no other station can reach them so effectively. These families love good things as they love good music . . . and can afford to buy them, too. Advertisers regard them as the most inviting segment of this biggest and richest of all markets. Whatever language you speak ...may we help you speak it more profitably through music? \ \J AND WQXR-FM RADIO STATIONS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOSTING THE SPONSOR (Continued from page 23) be famous. The promotional tie-in comes easily. Every week, table cards are placed on the tables of the restaurant whose chef has been selected. The cards plug the show, and give the time and TV channel on which the show can be seen. Since the show uses 52 chefs in a year's time, there is an ever-growing number of better-class diners whose attention is directed to the show. A. S. Beck gets a viewing boost from this, and from other Daily News-WPIX promotions such as the tie-in with Stern's department store windows featuring Fashions on a Budget hats (the Beck portion), Hick's confectionery stores' window displays, Miss Swanson's appearance at fashion shows, a TWA flight to Paris for a look-see at new fashions, and a continuing series of appearances of the show's star at various fashion and social functions. In nearly every case, the event is plugged well in advance in the 2,500,000-circulation News. Some stations have found that air "billboarding" of a sponsor's show increases the over-all effectiveness of the program, while affording the station a convenient and low-cost method of promoting sponsored TV programs. "Billboarding" is TV's equivalent of courtesy broadcast announcements. Virtually every commercial program that has appeared on Cleveland's WEWS has been billboarded. The WEWS billboarding formula consists usually of 2-by-2 slides, sometimes with 35 mm film strips. Such billboarding is self-explanatory for the most part, and a recorded musical backing is enough to supply the audio portion. It is probably the quickest form of TV program promotion to get under way. It uses TV to sell TV. The WEWS sales department will sign an advertiser, and in an hour or two the station's art staff will have the cards in the works. The cards are used "live" on easels for the first day (usually that same evening) and later turned over to the station's film lab where slides, or 16 mm and 55 mm film strips are made. From WEWS' viewpoint, the promotion is doubly effective. It gives a quick promotional push to new sponsored shows, and makes advertisers aware (sometimes when the advertiser is relaxing at home the evening of the day he signed his contract) of the fact that the station is interested in doing more than just selling him time or a program. Among the commercial shows thus promoted on WEWS are Philco's Touchdou)] series, Standard Oil Co oi Ohio's Tele vision Tryouts, Li/e-NBC convention coverage, General Electric's local sponsorship of baseball events, RCA's Laugh With the Ladies, and Kaiser-Frazer's election-night telecasts. For each of these sponsors, WEWS' relatively inexpensive billboarding, backed by newspaper promotions in the Scripps-Howard papers and local merchandising tie-ins produced greater audiences — with no cost to the advertiser. The tie-in promotions of WPIX and the "house ad" promotions of WEWS are not unique. They are merely representative of the type of continuous promotion done by stations like WFIL-TV and WCAUTV in Philadelphia, WBKB and WGNTV in Chicago, KFI-TV and KTLA in Hollywood, KDYL-TV in Salt Lake City, WBEN-TV in Buffalo, and KSTP-TV in Minneapolis. Salt Lake City's KDYL-TV recently ran a promotion for the Anderson Jewelry Company, a local merchant, that is typical of top sponsor-station promotional tie-ins which produce greater viewing for both. KDYL-TV telecast a display of $2,500,000 worth of Harry Winston's famous diamonds in a two-hour pickup. The promotional campaign was a real ballyhoo operation, with tie-ins arranged with newspapers, the Junior Chamber of Commerce Fall fashion show, and with the sponsor. Nearly 100,000 people were brought downtown in Salt Lake City for the event, and some 26,000 passed through Anderson's during the two-hour show. The sponsor received extra promotion in the form of a special KDYL-TV Man on the Street show outside the store, where the extra crowds became part of another show, which had the sponsor's own store for a backdrop. In Buffalo, the Danahy-Faxon Nu-Way Markets received a similar promotional backing from station WBEN-TV with the two-time telecast of the Nu-Way Free Cooking School. The Buffalo Evening News, which owns the TV station, went all-out in its efforts. The event was featured in the daily TV column, on the front page with special feature stories, plugged in truck signs on the paper's delivery trucks, and included in the station's continuous direct-mail promotions to dealers, set-owners, and proprietors of public places with sets. Danahy-Faxon put up a tent in downtown Buffalo to house the event, and WBEN-TV program personnel helped to create the carnival atmosphere for the cooking lessons conducted by Katherine Stafford. Sets were installed by WBENTV in nearby Nu-Way stores, and thous(Please turn to fiage tnh 40 SPONSOR