Sponsor (July-Dec 1952)

SELL Your Product! PAUL "BUZZ" BERLIN — ("Mission in Music" — 'Dinner Date") Houston's Number One — the most popular radio personality ever to hit town — with an audience greater than all other pop music jockeys combined! WALTER COLVIN — ("Joe's Show'' — "Spinner Sanctum") Known as "|oe Chrysanthemum" to a tremendous following of both Negroes and whites, Walt spins the finest platters in the jazz, blues, and bebop department. BIFF COLLIE— ("Collie's Corral" — "Houston Hoedown") BillImarrl-raicd as one of the top Western jockeys in the nation. Biff's sensational popularity and loyalty to his commercial products makes him the finest sales vehicle in the market. FOR CONSISTENT SALES RESULTS PUT YOUR PRODUCT ON A K-NUZ PERSONALITY PROGRAM Call FORjOE National Representative or DAVE MORRIS General Manager KEystone 2581 TWX HO-414 HOUSTON'S LEADING INDEPENDENT Gross time for Power Plan tomes to Sid. 070 a week with annual dollar discounts ranging from 27.5 to 44.5'*. A 52-week advertiser also gets an additional discount of 8.5%. These discounts are applicable to the advertiser's total purchases in CBS radio. Even an advertiser coming in once automatically gets a discount, since he spends more than $10,000 a year. A one-time advertiser, therefore, gets Power Plan for a total of about $16.040, assuming he buys nothing else on the network. A 13week run means a total weekly cost I time and talent i of about $15,400 and CBS estimates on that basis, that the plan has a potential cost of $2.81 per 1.000 different homes per week. Theoretically, CBS will sell split networks to advertisers if the "technical" problems aren't too great. In actual practice, CBS is offering the plan as a complete network package, requiring the purchase of 200 stations. TCBC: Unlike ABC. which increased the number of its Pyramid shows, NBC some time ago reduced its Operation Tandem from five to three programs. Since NBC has made it a polic\ to require across-the-board buys in tandem, it found the five-program costs were too high for most advertisers. NBC also started out with a requirement for 13-week contracts but that has been cropped for the present minimum of one week's purchase. Operation Tandem is the only plan in which the adventure-mystery type of show does not predominate. Its sole thriller is Barrie Craig, a private-eye opus. The other two shows are Red Skelton and Judy Canova. NBC's price is a flat $15,000 (a new low figure) with no discounts. The advertiser must take the entire NBC network of 190 stations. This hasn't discouraged Emerson Drug, which has bought the 1952-53 season to push Bromo Seltzer. Smith Bros, used the plan for the five weeks ending 11 December to introduce its new chlorophyll, mentholated cough drops. Plymouth was in recently for one week. The Smith Bros, buy is a good example of the special uses of the saturationparticipation type of offering. In coming out with a new product. Smith Bros, didn't have a clear idea of where its markets were. So it took advantage of the broad coverage offered b\ NBC's Operation Tandem to reach as many homes as possible. NBC estimates Tandems cost-per1.000 gross homes at $1.36 or about $1.50 for 1.000 different homes. Last season Operation Tandem delivered 1,000 messages at the rate of $2.00. To equal that figure this season, NBC -..\-. Operation Tandem would need an average Nielsen rating per program of 5.6 and the network is sure that it will top this with points to spare. On the whole, tandem plans are the newest, and at this point encouragingh well-supported, method of time buying on major networks. * * * RADIO-TV FOR MARS [Continued from page 32 I does the public I show rated an 8.6 Nielsen for second week of October, reached 3.771.000 homes, which put it in sixth place). Mars expects to stay with it despite rising TV costs. And the rising cost of TV is what's taking money from other media, Gies indicated. For example. Pvlars' expenditures on Howdy Doody, its first TV venture, over the NBC TV net tripled between September 1949 and June 1952. when the show was dropped. Results were good from the start, however, and Mars increased its sponsorship from one segment to three in June 1950. then dropped back to two in December 1950. Current TV shusr: Early this year Mars bought half of Super Circus over ABC TV out of Chicago and for a time, until June, had two TV shows running. Super Circus, costing Mars $750,000 a year, uses all available live markets, which vary from week to week, plus 17 b\ kinescope — or about 36 in all. How well did two TV shows and a radio program pull? Mars ran a premium offer on Howdy Doody and Super Circus and a contest on People Are Funny in FebruaryMarch and got over two million wrappers in all. Gies says Mars will accept kines now where his company wouldn't have a year ago; the quality has improved and its harder to get openings for live shows. Incidentally, he predicts some current TV network advertisers will have to go into spot TV instead when there arc hundreds of TV stations. Reason: expense. 64 SPONSOR