Sponsor (July-Dec 1952)

States is a factor of such overwhelming importance as to reduce other considerations. This medium is the only one, the agency men are advising their clients, which gives truly national (overage— the maximum degree of customer saturation — and will never be displaced in that regard. 3. The full appreciation of the thorough flexibility of radio and the economy derivable from its proper localization had not been arrived at by polic) makers of business until recently. 4. The process of media decentralization will in due time become quite pronounced in TV also. With the expansion of TV and the corollary increased resort to TV film programs, the tendency will be to buy in terms of specific markets. This preference for market-by-market exploitation will increase in ratio to the galloping rise in the cost of national network coverage. In fact, the cost of TV in the matter of rates will detemine the decree of the advert iscrs major -take in radio for at least the next five years. 5. Network radio in order to meet the competition from spot radio will have (o become more and more flexible; maybe flexible to the point where it will be difficult to distinguish between the two. 6. More and more national advertiser money is being siphoned out to the local market through cooperative advertising. This movement accounts in perhaps no minor measure for the prosperity accruing to stations from local-retailer sales. As the strategy toward greater budgetary concentration in local markets takes on momentum, the ad manager will recapture control of this co-op money from the company sales manager, who now uses the co-op allotment mostly as a stimulator device with distributors and dealers. 7. The new pattern will give recognition, among other things, to two cardinal marketing concepts long em braced li\ some ol America's leading advertisers: (1) it is often better and cheaper to achieve No. 1 sales ranking in specific markets or regions than to difTuse your resources lor an also-ran position everywhere and (2) buying habits for some products vary markedly according to regions. For instance, in some Midwest areas the smoking habits of women vary tremendously from those of New York women. 8. Radio, even with its mountainous availability of research material and manifold services, is still sorel) in need of: (1) a more exhaustively documented ston of the home's secondary and tertiary sets and out-of-home listening and (2) a spot checking service that is as national and inclusive as possible. Agencies will find this latter tool more and more a requisite as the scope of spot radio expands over the coming years. Incidentally, most of the media directors queried felt assured {Please turn to page 125) How strategist* in agencies appraise rule of major media in post-freeze era TELEVISION Agencies doubt medium will duplicate national coverage pattern of radio. They feel it will be used increasingly on spot and regional basis, especially because of high costs as well as recent emergence of film. RADIO Aural medium has been overly penalized due to TV. Though it has lost audience, it is still deemed only truly national medium capable of quickly saturating the nation. Spot and coop will get increased billings. NEWSPAPERS Specific market coverage trend will hurt neivspaper supplements benefiting individual newspapers, though not to the same degree that local radio stations will profit in the postfreeze years, agencymen believe. MAGAZINES Like network radio, the entertainment slicks will suffer, losing billings to television. But unlike net radio, magazines have no way of becoming flexible and taking on aspects of a market-by-market medium. 11 AUGUST 1952 31