Sponsor (July-Dec 1951)

SPONSOR SPEAKS TV: after the freeze lifts If all goes as FCC Chairman Wayne Coy hopes, television as a coast-tocoast saturation medium should he on its way this fall after the freeze lifts. He looks for about 1500 TV stations by 1956: 2500 by 1961: 3000 when grants finally level off. Thus, TV outlets 10 years hence may he more numerous than radio (today there are about 2250 AM stations. 670 FMers. I Today s 107 stations cover 63 markets and 60% of the nation's population. Some 400 applications representing 171 communities I including communities now served I have been dormant in Commission files during the freeze. These will be acted on with all possible speed, says Chairman Coy. with important non-TV areas like Portland. Ore.. Denver. El Paso and Shreveport getting first call. Next to be serviced will be applications from one-or-two-station cities like Kansas < ii\. Houston. Miami. St. Louis. When the freeze lilts the Commission expects another 500 applications to pour in. Chairman Co) looks on the prompt lifting of the fire/.-, and the speedy processing of applications, as an act of honor land some of his fellow-Commissioners share the feeling.) Even two years ago be was champing at the bit. planning expediencies that would hurry the granting process when the time was right. But the problems of color, allocation uncertainties, the wishes of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee could not be rushed. Some new grantees will be on the air in jig-time due to prior purchase of equipment. But for most six months or longer will be required. The avalanche of TV set purchases slowed down earlier this year. Some 13.500.000 will be in use this fall. But w hen new stations come into new communities the total will skyrocket — and the gold rush will again be on for set manufacturers. Stripped for action Without exception, the radio networks have gotten over the jitters and this fall will present a more optimistic, realistic, and alert front to sponsors. Perhaps the trying period through which the nets have been going I and still are I was unavoidable — particularly since so little was done to avoid it. Indicative of the new order of things is the streamlining of program packages. Some have been cut in cost as much as 50c/r ; the average about L5%. Yet so far as we can detect this has been done without noticeable loss of quality. Network programing is more imaginative than it has been for years. \ plan which may soon be unveiled b\ Bill Fineshriber. program vice president of Mutual, will reveal ways that costs can be cut while impro\ ing the sponsor's opportunity to realize a profit. Morning programing particu larly is being overhauled, with everything that program chiefs have learned about present-day audiences taken into account. Night programing is being trimmed for realistic work against TV competition, and indications are that at least two of the nets will be sold solid this fall. So intense is the activity that we expect innovations in programing to be announced more than once between now and September. We believe that sales activity is apace, with net salesmen for the first time in years rolling up their sleeves way above the elbow and being handsomely supported by merchandising. There will no longer be the feeling at any net that because the TV Division has the business the company is satisfied. The era of stiff competition, realistic pricing, and "to hell with deals has emerged. This is how it looks to us (page 21). And this is as it should be. Secretary Sawyer's 3rd radio station One important government servant who believes in the future of radio is Secretarv of Commerce Charles Sawyear, who has just added WCOL I AM and FM ) . Columbus to the Ohio radio properties he already owns in Dayton and Springfield. For 250-watt WCOL, Secretary Sawyer pa\s $100,000 plus another $200,000 in studio and office rentals over a 10 year period. Subject of many an article dealing with his economic insight and business sagacity. Secretarj Sawyer is going with radio on the long haul. As chief counsel and member of the inner circle at Procter & Gamble he had opporlunitv to check radio's productivity over main a war. He sees nothing in the current picture. TV notwithstanding, to give him pause. Applause Well done In the midsi of disaster the I .S. system ol broadcasting has again demonstrated iis remarkable ability to perform yeoman service while taking a severe battering. I In lull story of how scores of radio stations in Missouri and Kansas alert id their listeners, guided them minute 80 l>\ minute in a hundred different ways. moved in with material and spiritual aid can never be adequately told, though much will be written. And the corollarj story of how stations and sponsors outside the flood belt, in all parts of the nation, pitched in to provide relief can only be covered fragmentarily . too. Suffice it to sa\ that the American system ol competitive broadcasting has proved out again. Why it always performs over its bead in cases of extieine i mi rgency is not exactly known. Perhaps it s because station operators, subconsciously aware of the fact that their facilities have become an inseparable part of the lives of the people the) serve, are endued with a sense of res] sibility beyond the call of duty. SPONSOR