Sponsor (Jan-Apr 1958)

by Joe Csida CHANSATIONAL! SMASH RATINGS all over the country! NEW CHARLIE CHAN improves ratings, betters time periods everywhere! In Chicago, on WBKB it has improved the Wednesday night 10:15-10:45 time spot by 251' c to become the NUMBER ONE syndicated program in the market on any station, any day, any time! Outstrips closest competition by over 53%, capturing a 39.2% share of audience. (Videodex 11/57). Captures the big share of audiences in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Columbus, Detroit, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Dallas-Ft. Worth and in key market after market! TELEVISION PROGRAMS OF AMERICA, INC. 488 MADISON • N.Y. 22 • PLaza 5 2100 ^ Sponsor | backstage Tv networks at a turning point There are all kinds of indications these days that the American people are interested, to a degree they've never evidenced before, in national and international affairs. Television, of course, and to a lesser extent radio, can certainly take credit for making a vast contribution to this developing public interest. And television, too, just a short time ago, gave one of the most dramatic indications as to just how strong the people's interest in world affairs has become. On Tuesday, 7 January, Dave Garrowa\. on his Today show, offered to send a copy of the Rockefeller Brothers' Foundation report on national security to any listener who wrote in for it. Before the weekend, Dave had received over 200.000 requests for the report, with hundreds still pouring in. in every mail. The Rockefeller report, as all of us know, hardly falls in the category of light reading. It goes on for some 25,000 words in its analysis of the comparative strength of our nation and the Russians. And when a quarter of a million people take the trouble to write in for a report of this kind, as a result of one announcement on a 7 to 9 a.m. tv show. \ou've got a reasonably alert and intelligent populace, and certainly one which is responding to television. Network tv at its best Typical of the manner in which tv is fulfilling this desire on the part of an ever-growing segment of the populace for meaningful in j formation concerning the state of our union and the universe is the show the CBS TV network ran on 5 January as one in its series of 90-minute Twentieth Century shows. Utilizing the brilliant corps of CBS correspondents in key areas around the globe, and in penetrating, meaningful interviews with more than a half-dozen missile ex [ perts from all branches of the service, and other scientists, this program. Where We Stand, was literally an education on the same | general subject as the Rockefeller report: Our preparedness for any possible attack by the Soviet. Not only did it make crystal clear the danger of our present position I We're at least a year, probably two behind the Russians in intercontinental missiles) but it was as timely as the next day's newspapers. For one of the experts interviewed on the show was Lieutenant General James M. Gavin, chief of weapons research and development of the United States Army, and at that very moment the front pages of the country's newspapers were telling the story of Gavin's proposed retirement "because I can do more good out of the sen ice. (ban in it." All in all, the show was a masterful job, and sponsor, Prudential Insurance Company of America, agency Reach, McClinton, the network and all personnel concerned deserve the highest praise. The show cost Prudential about $125,000, and took three months of preparation. It was a prime example of the kind of show which is possible to produce only because network television in this country has developed along the lines and to the degree it has. 25 JANUARY 1958