Sponsor (July-Dec 1952)

P&G'S "GUIDING LIGHT" [Continued from page 31) studio, Corday starts to block out the TV show and gives the cuts which will bring it down to the right length for television. About $50 a week is saved in rehearsal hall charges. (That's $2,600 a year.) Also, the tape recorder saves money in radio rehearsal, gives a "fluff-free'' show. 4. The TelePrompTer is used on the TV show. While this gadget costs a minimum of $30 an hour for the "Class A"' battery (three reading units, plus equipment and operator), producer Lesan feels that it actually saves money in the long run. "We don't let our actors use it as a crutch," Lesan states, "but it does give them a sense of security and cuts down on the amount of rehearsal we need. Also, this feeling of security is transferred to the quality of the show, and gives the sponsor a better program for his money, which is itself a saving." 5. Special effects are held to a minimum. The TV Guiding Light is done with a bare hour and 30 minutes of camera rehearsal daily, so there's no time to fool around with trick shots or KWJJ Portland's Family Station Local News Edited for Portland listeners— KWJJ news is carefully spaced to give Local people a complete coverage of local and national events. Local Sports No other Station in Portland gives such complete coverage of local sports events. KWJJ carries exclusive Baseball, Basketball and Football broadcasts. Local Music KWJJ's two popular disc jockeys bring Portland the kind of music it wants to hear. Local preferences guide the selection of all KWJJ music. KWJJ Studios & Offices 1011 S. W. 6th Ave PORTLAND OREGON fancy TV production. A sample of such trimming was told to SPONSOR byProduction Manager John Egan. "A recent script called for a scene to be played in a car. Then, the car was to crash in the fog. and roll over a couple of times. This was easy to do in radio with sound effects. In the TV version, we played the identical scene on a park bench instead of in a trick car set, and saved ourselves about $300. Then, we had the car crash offstage." 6. All sets and props, down to the last item, are rented from CBS TV. Reason: After careful study of the relative merits of stockpiling its own properties and sets vs. renting from the network's extensive supply, Compton felt it would be cheaper to use the latter method. This way, a minimum of Compton manpower is involved in keeping track of sets and props, and the network must handle all the repairs and maintenance of permanent sets. These are just a few of the problems and solutions which Compton has dealt with in handling the two-way serial. There were many others, some large and some small. "One of the first things we learned was to respect the physical capabilities and tempers of our cast, which we brought over virtually intact from radio into TV," producer Lesan recalls. "Irna Phillips is famous for her scripts which center around the dialogue of just two people. In radio, this is easy. A week of two-character dialogue in TV would put the actors in the hospital. The strain of memorizing and acting would be tremendous, and the rehearsal would wear them out. "Compared to our old methods in handling the radio-only Guiding Light. we used more actors and we use each of them less frequently. All of our basic cast is under contract, and we guarantee them a certain number of appearances within each 13-week cycle. This keeps our cast happy, because a day's work on the TV show practically removes the possibility of their doing other TV work for two days. "We also work much further ahead in all phases of the show, both in the drama content and in the commercials. It used to be in radio that we could work on changes and substitutions as tight as three days ahead and still get away with it. Now, the smallest leeway we allow ourselves is three weeks." Since almost any major TV show has far more "delayed broadcasts" than a major radio show, due to the clearance problem in the large number of one-station and two-station TV markets, some special difficulties had to be solved by Compton. Of these, perhaps the biggest headache was in dealing with a favorite commercial tactic of Procter & Gamble — premiums and contests. These are fairly simple in radio. The commercials start plugging the offer or contest when "Television will always prosper beeause it provides demonstration — sight with sound. And radio will always prosper beeause it gives greater saturation than all other media — because it is more intimate, because it is more flexible, because it is personal selling." HAROLD E. FELLOWS, Pres. 1SARTSR it starts, and they stop plugging it when the promotion is over. In TV, with some kinescope stations running three weeks behind the radio schedule (although they are day-and-date in all the interconnected TV areas where the show is seen live) the problem was different. Some TV stations, Compton realized, would be starting a premium offer in the kinescope commercials long after it had started on radio. Later, they would still be making the offer while the radio version was concluded. How Compton got around the problem: A traffic system was set up to route film commercials to the kinescope stations for local insertion. Commercials containing a P&G offer are sent to these stations so that they can be spliced in for a simultaneous start with radio. This is continued until the kines catch up with the offer. Then, when the kinescopes start to run past the closing date of the offer, film commercials minus the offer are sent to TV stations so that the out-of-date commercials can be removed locally. (This problem is not peculiar to TV in Guiding Lighls air operation. Several radio outlets air Guiding Light from transcriptions. Here, the agency sends out special e.t.'s with revised commercials similar to the revised TV kinescopes.) In many ways, the radio-TV Guiding Lights are designed around the commercials, just as their production and rehearsal schedules are geared around the physical capabilities of the production staff and actors. 90 SPONSOR