Sponsor (July-Dec 1951)

tion, but one which appears to be expanding rapidly, is the teaming up of husbands and wives and of pairs of morning men. One outstanding early-morning duo is the husband and wife team of busy Tex and Jinx McCrary. Jinx is the former movie actress and model, Jinx Falkenberg; Tex was a former editorial writer on the New York Daily Mirror. Their daily morning show on WNBC, New York, features interviews with well known celebrities — baseball players, authors, politicians, actresses, etc. It differs from competing programs in its news feature approach, an angle probably accounted for by Tex McCrary 's newspaper background. On at about the same time are Dorothy (Kilgallen) and Dick (Kollmar), a husband and wife team heard over WOR, New York. WJZ counters with Ed and Pegeen Fitzgerald, another married pair. Representative of the growing trend toward pairs of morning men is the comic combination of Rayburn & Finch, heard over WNEW, New York, for the past four years and due for a CBS network show this Fall. Zany and completely unpredictable, they've built a loyal audience largely through studied irreverence for commercial transcriptions. When they're not taking an imaginary, and highly improbable, trip through a sponsor's factory, chances are they're cueing a humorous interpolation into the middle of a very serious transcribed sales pitch. Explaining their reasons for overriding a fairly general rule against a comic treament on musical clock programs, the two explained: "When you pack commercials so close together in a short period of time, they get deadly. We dress them up by kidding them a little, adding something extra that listeners get to look for. One woman we know turns the radio down during the musical parts, turns it up only when the commercials come on. Of course this kind of treatment requires good taste — which we have." Kidding the commercial is only one way of adding the important personal touch to selling which all stations agree is vital for musical clock shows. The Rayburn & Finch approach to transcribed commercials is unusual, however, and most of the broadcasters quizzed suggested the personal, ad lib type of pitch done by the morning man himself. The words "sincere" and "informal" WTAR Sells ALL The Norfolk Metropolitan Sales Area for You! WTAR is the profitable way to sell the big, eager and able-to-buy Norfolk Metropolitan Sales Area — Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, Virginia. According to BMB, 95% of the families in this fourcounty sales area listen to WTAR regularly. Hooper says that most Norfolks listen most of the time to WTAR. Add the fact that WTAR delivers more listeners-per-dollar than any other local station or combination of stations. Easy to see why WTAR reduces sales costs, increases sales and profits. MARKET DATA -Norfolk Metropolitan Sales Area population IR^Jestimates V-"i^ 1/1/51 RETAIL SALES1950 W/^ ESTIMATES EFFECTIVE BUYING INCOME flZH ,950 *-*"^ ESTIMATES Total (in Thousands) Families (in Thousands) Dollars (in Thousands) % of U.S.A. Net Dollars (in Thousands) Per Capita Per Family Norfolk -Portsmouth Metropolitan Area . Newport News Metropolitan Area . 419.4 144. 5 107.2 38.9 $375,623 113,954 .2677 .0812 $509,403 182,051 $1,215 1,260 $4,752 4,680 TOTAL Norfolk Metropolitan 563.9 146.1 489,577 .3489 691,454 1,226 4,7 3 3 NBC Affiliate 5,000 Watts Day and Night Inter-connected NBC, CBS, ABC, & DuMont Television Networks Nationally Represented by EDWARD PETRY & CO., INC. 2 JULY 1951 51