Sponsor (Jan-June 1951)

ALKA-SELTZER STORY {Continued from page 27 I chairman of the board and still active at 76: Walter Beardsley, president: Oliver B. Capelle. sales promotion manager; H. S. Thompson, advertising manager; and L. E. Waddington, radio/TV director. Out of the jumble of shifting programs, a pattern of two trends running side by side is discerned: news broadcasts and. until recently, entertainment with a rural tone. News broadcasts were first used on a spot basis until the sales response indicated that it was time to move to larger weapons. The next step was purchasing the 9 p.m. news show on the Don Lee network in 1936. By 1941. Miles* experience justified signing for NBC's News of the World with |,,lm \ andcrcooL This program, now featuring Morgan Beatty as the commentator, is worth about $2,500,000 in drug sales for Miles, according to trade estimates. During the latter part of the war the new approach was supplemented by adding the Robert St. John show. St. John gave a personality slant to the news with portraits of outstanding figures. After the Barn Dance, the outstanding show in the Miles rural programing trend was Lum and Abner. The Elkhart firm began sponsoring these two comedy storekeepers of Pine Ridge, Ark.! in 1941 on ABC. That same year, this show became the first commercial account for the Keystone Network. Transcriptions from the ABC broadcasts were run over 150 Keystone stations in the areas where there was no satisfactory ABC coverage. At the end of the first 13-week period, Miles made a check on these Keystone stations by offering a photo of Lum and Abner. Two hundred requests per station would have been considered satisfactory. More than 62,000 were received. In stating that the way to reach rural audiences was through rural stations, Keystone cited a study made by the Nielsen Drug Index staff. This survey showed that the rural station cities were 28% ahead of all other markets after the 26-week local in-town-station broadcasts for Miles. In 1947, however, the Keystone time was dropped for Lum and Abner and the primary coverage shifted from ABC to CBS. The next year Miles abandoned the program completely, concen trating on shows with a broader appeal. This year the only "small town" phase of Miles radio advertising is a series of Nervine announcements. They are only a minor part of the broadcast budget. Despite the passing of the corn cob pipe from their shows, that WOWO sign-off melody "Back Home in Indiana" can still be associated with the company, sales promotion manager Capelle says, "Miles official representatives, by common consent, maintain the status of friendly, small town workers who look with great respect upon big city contemporaries while never deigning to imitate their methods." Still, the company can hold its own with any big city slicker in utilizing research. Schwerin is usually busy, either pre-testing new shows for them, or finding out what's exciting about the programs and commercials they are now using. For example, Miles' daytime serial Hilltop House was exposed to Schwerin audience test groups. Their reactions showed that authors Add) Richton and Lynn Stone, had unusual skill in depicting children. To the writers this meant that episodes focussing on youngsters had the strongest emotional impact. Alka-Seltzer's lone TV show Quiz Kids I which remains on radio in a separate version ) came under the same scrutiny. The smartest and quickest of the mental prodigies, the favorites of radio, had to give way. The small, five-year-old who missed answers stole the show. TV's emphasis on personality spelled the difference. A valuable tip for the advertiser was that the Quiz *TIME BUYERS MAKE A STRATEGIC HIT TOO... WHEN THEY BUY THE TREMENDOUS PURCHASING POWER OF KEYSTONE'S SMALL TOWN & RURAL MARKETS! i 84 SPONSOR