Sponsor (Jan-Apr 1958)

Sponsor backstage continued . possible — the government ever clears any substantial time for tolltelevision on home channels, and the fee tv forces get 30,000,000 to 50,000,000 homes equipped with coin meters or their equivalent — if that day comes, I foresee grosses of $15,000,000 to $25,000,000 on a single event. I think that if 50,000,000 seats were equipped to take quarters to receive a fee tv show, people who own half those 50,000,000 sets would have been happy to drop four quarters into the slot to see Sugar Ray and Basilio batter each other around the square. There would have been your $25,000,000. It'll come. Just wait and see! The theater boys were happy The bout surely made a lot of theater exhibitors happy. And it's nice to see any phase of television bring the movie men a little joy. Tv still looms as one of the top 10 forces of destruction, so far as theaters are concerned. I have written almost as many words as there are post-1948 prints in movie studio vaults about the inevitability of the eventual release of the newer movies to television. Right at the moment we are going through a period when film production executives are assuring exhibitors that they will under no circumstances release their post-1948 product to television. I remember, quite vividly, the time when most film production executives were giving exhibitors similar assurances concerning pre-1948 product. So do large numbers of exhibitors apparently. For one of the more startling entertainment business developments of recent weeks was the move of the Theater Owners of America in this area. The board of directors of the exhibitor organization authorized its president, Ernest Stellings to explore the possibility of working out a plan to set up a non-profit organization, for the express purpose of buying up post-1948 films to keep them off television. At first blush, and working from a totally inadequate base of knowledge about the plan itself, it strikes me as a highly impractical one. But I admire the efforts of the exhibitors to protect themselves, and I wish them well. I still believe, however, that the exhibitors have only a single, very small finger to stuff in the disturbinglylarge hole in the dike. Television has long since proved itself an insatiable ogre of program material of all types, Hollywood movies most indeed not excepted. When the ogre is ready for another helping of fresher film product, he'll pile the plate with some of those post-'48 goodies, TOA or no TOA. Someone will find a way, yet The brighter, more affluent exhibitors have long since diversified their operations, just as have the brighter and more affluent businessmen in every phase of American industry, including showbusiness. Many of them, of course, have gone into the television business themselves. And very profitably so. Many of them are working feverishly to get into the fee tv business, closed-circuit and otherwise. As a matter of fact I know a couple of bright, affluent television men who are checking the closed-circuit video business pretty carefully. Their attitude is that they can promote a closed-circuit fight as well as the next guy, and I surely believe they are right. The truth is that here and there a bright, affluent advertiser and agency executive is day-dreaming about ways and means of harnessing this closed-circuit colt to his merchandising problems. The truth is, too, I think that one such guy will succeed. ^ where is | every body? J^HE latest 19-county Telepulse and ARB Reports claim that nearly everybody is Eastern North Carolina is at home watching Channel 9. But if you want to talk to these Tar Heels, Hollingbery can arrange it. SPONSOR • 19 APRIL 1958