Television digest with electronics reports (Jan-Dec 1958)

which they had written or had an interest in. We have compiled Chart D-1 to show the number of releases of these selections again before and after 1948. As you can see, the chart shows a total of 70 before and 210 afterwards. Again, 3 times as many. To answer that, let us clearly understand how a hit is promoted. There are several ways: If it’s used importantly in a motion picture, that could help a great deal. If the jukeboxes buy it, so that the kids can put in their nickels or dimes and hear it, that helps the sale of the record to the home. But it is quite true that of all ways of promoting a record, the most important is having it played on radio and, to a certain extent, on TV, although radio still has a greater influence on the popularity of records than TV. The Importance of the Disc Jockey So we now come face to face with a very important gentleman, the disc jockey. He too is not an entirely independent potentate because he too must play what his audience enjoys hearing. But let’s give him everything that is his due and say that promotion via disc jockey is the one most important influence in exposing a new record. Nothing could be further from the truth than to say that NBC has shown a marked preference for RCA Victor recordings. They couldn’t show favoritism even if they wanted to. They couldn’t because they, like we, are charged with the responsibility of attracting the widest possible audience, which means giving the public what the public wants to hear and see. They are just as much under the pressure of competition as the Record Division is. But the most important, reason why RCA’s relationship with NBC has nothing whatever to do with our success or lack of it in the record business, lies simply in the fact that the disc jockeys have had the greatest success on local independent radio stations, and you will find mighty few disc jockeys of note operating as network attractions. We have made a compilation of the radio stations listed on the Variety Disc Jockey Poll for the 6 weeks from Jan. 15, 1958 through Feb. 19, 1958 inclusive. It shows that of the 216 listings, 138 were for independent stations and only 78 were for stations affiliated with a network. Only one was an owned and operated station of one of the networks. Some of the stations were listed by Variety more than once during this period while others were not. A disc jockey, if he is to be successful, is exactly as local a phenomenon as the local high school dance, the local department store, or the particular local lovers’ lane in which young people like to meet. Drumbeating Won’t Make Flop Into Hit I said before that the disc jockey was not all-powerful. Here we come to the most fascinating aspect of the entertainment business, and one in which I deeply believe. Namely, that the best kind of promotion, hoopla, advertising, publicity, or what have you, is no guarantee that the piece of music on which it is expended is going to please the public. In the most fundamental sense, we. cannot sell anything. The public has to want to buy it. Unless the record has within it the germ of success — and don’t ask me what that germ is because I do not know — no amount of drumbeating will transform a flop into a hit. Many of us so-called “experts” have our garages or apartments filled with records our distributors and dealers could not sell which we “knew” were going to be great hits. We promoted them well. We spent time, money, effort on them. They were failures. While we are on the subject of promotion, I feel I must comment on certain matters raised in the record. Mr. Schwartz referred to an RCA Victor Records’ advertisement entitled “New Sales Force” which appeared in the Sept. 25, 1957 issue of Variety. This advertisement listed 3 radio shows and 5 TV shows on NBC. Mr. Schwartz CHART D-1 ASCAP Compositions Selected on Basis of Proponents’ Testimony Selection Title — (Year First Recorded) Kim Gannon Tunes A DrearSer’s Holiday (1949) Always In My Heart (1942) Autumn Nocturne (1941) I’ll Be Home For Christmas (1946) Moonlight Cocktail (1941) So Lovely (1938) Total Du Bose Haywood-Gershunn Tunes I Got Plenty O’Nuttin (1936) It Ain’t Necessarily So (1936) Summertime (1935) Total Burton Lane Tunes Everything I Have Is Yours (1933) When I’m Not Near The Girl I Love (1946) . How About You? (1941) How Are Things in Glocca Morra (1946) Old Devil Moon (1946) Total Joan Whitney Tunes Candy (1945) Far Away Places (1948) High On A Windy Hill (1940) It All Comes Back To Me Now (1940) My Sister & I (1941) Total Total No. of Releases ' Before After 1-1-48 1-1-48 — 2 5 10 2 12 1 8 3 12 2 — 13 44 7 20 8 19 14 61 29 100 5 9 2 2 3 10 2 8 2 11 14 40 2 4 — 11 4 9 4 2 4 — 14 26 70 210 * Includes selections of same performance released for sale through regular channels of distribution in different forms, such as 45rpm and 78rpm single records, 46rpm Extended Play records, 3^1/3 Long Play records, and prerecorded tapes. tried to imply that there was an improper use of NBC’s broadcasting facilities to further sales of RCA Victor records. What Mr. Schwartz failed to state was that all of these shov/s are or were sponsored in whole or in part by the Radio Corporation of America for the promotion of all RCA consumer products, including TV sets, radios, phonographs and records. These shows were paid for by RCA at the prevailing broadcast rates and were booked through the company’s regular advertising agencies. There is nothing free in this campaign. It costs us just the same as it would any other sponsor. Mr. Schwartz also stated that NBC “arranged” for a promotional tieup between the TV show Bride and Groom and RCA Camden records, leaving again an inference that NBC was favoring RCA records. NBC did not make any such “arrangement.” RCA Victor’s advertising manager for Camden records negotiated a contract dated Sept. 18, 1957 with King Television Productions, an organization completely independent from NBC and RCA, for the use of Camden records on the show. The Effect of Contests Another witness, Joan Whitney, testified about a contest which RCA Victor ran on a BMI selection entitled The Man with the Banjo recorded by the Ames Brothers. Her composition Man, Man Is for the Woman Made, an ASCAP selection, also recorded by the Ames Brothers, was on the other side of the record. She claimed that she was unaware of this practice of having contests to promote records, and that she considered this contest an unfair practice in so far as her composition was concerned. As I have stated frequently, we are not concerned with whether a particular selection is ASCAP or BMI. We are only concerned with selling phonograph records. In this particular instance we ran a contest on The Man with the Banjo because it naturally tied into National Banjo Week. I 4