Sponsor (July-Dec 1951)

Sixth of a series READ H. WIGHT Dir. of Radio & TV J. M. Mathes, Inc. LIKE MOST "Newsworthy" TV & RADIO EXECUTIVES Mr. Wight's LATEST BUSINESS PORTRAIT IS BY Photographer to the Business Executive .565 Fifth Ave., New York 17— PL 3-1882 Television is, in respect to general experience and trial and error, about where radio was in, say, 1929, the year Rudy Vallee started crooning. Therefore the censorship story is largely in the making. It was between the years 1930 and 1936, as set forth in the first article (13 August) of this two-article report, that radio went through the censorship wringer. Very likely the wealth of practical experience accumulated by radio will help TV escape the more lurid clashes. The Kefauver Hearings, the greatest television sensation to date, gave all thoughtful sponsors and telecasters a foretaste of the until-then-unsuspected political-commercial dynamite implicit in sight-and-sound-in-the-home. It is not too soon to ponder the lessons given by the Kefauver Hearings as to the "invasion of privacy" of innocentuntil-proven-guilty citizens and the infliction of ordeal by publicity in a country with a copper-rivetted pledge not to resort to "cruel and unusual punishment." Remember, that regular daily summaries of the Kefauver Hearings were sponsored. Remember, too, that in pre-war days radio took microphones into police courts and advertisers, at the local level, sponsored the actual pick-up of testimony. The sheer drama of the Kefauver investigation cannot be questioned. But right here the propriety of telecasting the hearings swings on the suspicion that Kefauver was, without so intending, putting on an entertainment. An advance hint of political vaudeville came out of St. Louis where, prior to the New York engagement, the Kefauver Committee sanctioned television. A celebrated "betting commissioner" promptly claimed constitional right not to be photographed on the stand. Later in Manhattan TV cameras panned down upon the hands of Frank Costello, alleged head man of the alleged underworld. Costello's fingers, chubby and fretful, immediately became, in themselves, a new kind of exciting dumb-show. These were the fingers of a fabled figure said to wield vast power. Now, in TV close-up, the fingers twitched, curled, and uncurled, gesticulated irritably. The American public in their homes and bars and clubs (and TV sales showrooms) sensed the tension, the fear in the breast of the great Costello. Everything that poker face, toneless voice, and lawyers conspired to cloak from view was brought to the awareness of the man in the streets. Costello had 10,000,000 jurors. By the third day he was hiding his hands, most of the time, under the table. The cameras had had their drama. In a matter of days the Kefauver hearings swelled from a novel "public event" into the most exciting spectacle of all time. Real villains faced real heroes. Page one came alive. Strange denizens were flushed from waterfront and hideout. A parade of guys and dolls right out of Damon Runyon put on a show, without AFRA fees, that stirred the rural evangelism of the peppery senator from New Hampshire. City slickers hid their reactions behind the impassive shrugs of the big-time gambler as country boys intoned old fashioned moral indignation. The American people, tense with suspense, moved in closer. It was better than the high wire act at Barnum & Bailey. And then, abruptly, the circus was ended. The debate on its propriety began. Educators asked each other if this was education, jurists wondered if it was jurisprudence, the clergy meditated the theology, civil libertarians the democracy of such TV hearings. Those who are pleased that underworld characters and ex-mayors have been smoked out proclaim that this was dynamic display of the usually screened-off pro's and con's of political corruption. It was, they believe, a fine thing, and there should be more. Advertisers, however, are warned against getting on such bandwagons. There may be local TV repeats of the Kefauver sort of thing. "Trial by kleig-lights and iconoscopes" is the appellation bestowed by the doubting traditionalists. This is a new, and infinitely more dangerous, extension of the old "trial by newspaper headlines. Philosophies are in head-on clash. TV, in one view, penetrates the inertia of the masses, electrifies abstract civics into understandable everyday ethics. This is held to beam a searing light upon the blacks and whites of public life. But the contrary viewpoint sees little net social benefit from sugarcoating the processes of government as "amusement" for the unthinking crowd. There was some evidence during the New York visit of the Senate committee that the public is over-responsive to personality, as such, and will as readily cheer an attractive scoundrel as a colorful New Hamp 78 SPONSOR