Sponsor (July-Dec 1951)

sprightly. While the elf leaps from telephone wire to wire, then plunges pathetically into a snow drift, the caroilers harmonize to the tune of Jingle Bells: We always do our best For you on Christmas Day, But some calls don't get through — Or have a long delay. So if you want to talk With loved ones far away It's wise to place your Christmas calls Ahead of Christmas Day. Then the camera pans back to the snow drift, and out pops the elf chirping: "Remember, rates are lower after 6:00 p.m. every day and all day Sunday, too." The strictly regional TV announcements are cleverly animated, too. For example, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company's video commercial (via N. W. Ayer & Son, Detroit I features a Mr. Classified cartoon character wearing a collegiate mortar board and gown. "Last Fall," says Michigan's advertising manager F. G. Wallis, "in a local neighborhood Halloween parade. Only ONE Station DOMINATES This Rich, Crowing 15-COUNTY MARKET WITH GENERAL MERCHANDISE SALES OF $89,084,000* ''Sales Management, 1951 Survey of Buying Power A%e you^fUU'^eftZ^ec £&<Zi0>t AM-FM WINSTON-SALEM NBC Affiliate HEADLET HEED CO one of the Detroit youngsters dressed up like this character, complete to the printed inscription on the front of his costume." Radio announcements used by the associate companies generally fall into two distinct groupings — recorded and live messages. Perhaps typical is the radio operation of the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania. This year, the Pennsylvania company will spend $140,000 to $150,000 for a continuous announcement schedule three-perweek on 59 of the larger Pennsylvania stations, two a week on 33 smaller ones, and varying numbers over five stations in Delaware. The company prefers recorded commercials whenever possible (written by William S. Harvey, copy chief at the Gray & Rogers Agency, and placed by timebuyer Walter M. Erickson). Each station on the schedule receives a new transcription every three months, on which are cut 20 separate one-minute spots. The messages are played repeatedly— one through 20 — until new transcriptions arrive from the ad agency. "The spots are scattered pretty much around the clock," says timebuyer Erickson. "But there's a heavy concentration during the early evening hours, in order to reach all members of the family at one time. In Philadelphia, which has 11 stations, there's scarcely an hour throughout the day and early evening when a Bell message is not heard. Over nine years of the Bell spot radio program, we've captured many valuable key times between important adjacencies." The company's predilection for recorded announcements is explained this way by agency radio/TV chief Edmund H. Rogers: "When a broadcast is live, each announcer interprets the message in his own way. We don't want that. Our material is not controversial, and shouldn't be in tone. There's no reason for excitement. We don't want it pounded across. It's just to be spoken conversationally, in a good-natured, man-to-man manner. We record it that way, and that's the way it's heard." The performer who presents the amiable, man-to-man spiel is Peter Roberts, an NBC announcer, who speaks on such regionally germane topics as the advisability of using the telephone directory instead of calling Information, and the courteous use of the party-line facilities. His dulcet, "This is 46 SPONSOR