Television digest with electronic reports (Jan-Dec 1959)

4 OCTOBER 12, 1959 EXPLOSIVE GROWTH OF FOREIGN TV: World TV has entered period of mushrooming growth which characterized the U.S. variety in the 1950's. During past 12 months, number of TV receivers outside the U.S. has increased by 43%, number of TV stations by 63%. There are now 1,010 TV stations and at least 33,725,000 sets in 53 countries outside the U.S. Add to these America's 554 stations & 51.5 million sets, plus 34 U.S. Armed Forces TV stations at foreign military posts, and the world TV total becomes 1,598 stations & 85,226,000 sets. These figures are distilled from Television Digest's new Foreign TV Directory, which we belive to be most complete and accurate ever compiled. It's a feature of Fall-Winter TV Factbook (No. 29), now in mails to full-service subscribers. Areas of TV's growth are sharply delineated in comparison of current directory with the one which appeared in 1958 Fall-Winter Factbook. During the 12-month period ending Aug. 1, these countries showed greatest increase in new stations: Italy, 144 stations added (mostly satellites); West Germany, 86; Japan, 44; Russia, 36; France, 22. These are the world's leading TV countries (figures up-to-date as of Aug. 1): United Kingdom, 30 stations & 10 million sets; Canada, 62 stations & 5.5 million sets; USSR, 106 stations & 3 million sets; Japan, 67 stations & 2.9 million sets; West Germany, 164 stations (including 128 satellites) & 2.9 million sets; Italy 313 stations (288 satellites) & 1.5 million sets; France, 45 stations & 1.3 million sets. Communist bloc lags far behind West in TV development. Including Russia's 106 stations & 3 million sets, total for the 8 countries is 136 stations, less than 4.1 million sets. New updated TV Factbook lists individually every one of the world's TV stations, with data on location, power, channel, starting date, etc., for all foreign stations — obtained directly from foreign sources in most cases. Summary table of World TV Stations & Sets will be found on p. 9. Congress More about THOSE ‘FIXED’ TV QUIZZES: Already-damaged TV reputations suffered further erosion last week in House Commerce legislative oversight subcommittee hearings reopening old quiz-show scandals. New suspicions about participants’ conduct in the programs were raised. NBC-TV & CBS-TV (ABC-TV didn’t go in for quizzes) were publicly embarrassed all over again. These were the wildly-headlined subcommittee accomplishments (see p. 2) as investigators MC’d by Chairman Harris (D-Ark.) delved into backstage operations of the big-prize-money quizzes which were hastily pulled off the air last year after “fix” stories began breaking in N.Y. newspapers (Vol. 14:35 et seq.). One smaller-budget quiz which survived that debacle also was tainted in testimony. Otherwise, little fresh evidence of rigging of the oncehigh-rated shows by packagers & producers (nobody accused the networks themselves of chicanery) seemed to be added to that already reported — or widely rumored during a 9-month probe by a N.Y. Grand Jury. The hearings will be on again this week. Transcripts of the jury’s proceedings were followed closely by subcommittee counsel Robert W. Lishman in questioning witnesses, most of them contestants whose testimony in the House caucus room was supplemented by kines of 3-year-old on-air performances. They told of careful screening by the shows’ operators for audience appeal, coaching on how to act out their parts before cameras & mikes, rehearsals of questions & answers, instructions on when to win & lose “contests” — and reprisals if they refused to play along in the manipulated programs. The caucus room reruns of the shows, which once kept the country fascinated, brought jeering laughter from spectators at the hearings as the contestants displayed uncertainty, anguish, triumph & despair. Much of it was old stuff. But at the week’s end the previously-unchallenged TV quiz reputation of the biggest 1956-57 isolation-booth hero of them all — $129,000 winner Charles Van Doren of NBC-TV’s defunct Twenty-One — was clouded. And NBC fired the producer of Tic Tac Dough, a lesser quiz which stayed on the air, for refusal to sign an affidavit that none of its contestants had been given answers to prize questions in advance. Van Doren was “relieved of all work assignments by NBC pending a final determination of the current Congressional investigation,” the network announced. Van Doren, a $50,000-a-year employe of NBC featured on Today since he parlayed his Dec. 5, 1956 debut on Twenty-One into record winnings, also won national fame as an astonishingly erudite young man who did much to make bookknowledge fashionable. He was suspended from his network job following failure to respond immediately to a call by the Harris subcommittee to appear & clear up questions which had been raised as to whether his appearance on Twenty-One followed a script, too. Van Doren had sent telegrams to Harris repeating Grand Jury denials that he had ever received help from anybody on the show. The subcommittee wasn’t satisfied with this response — and neither was NBC. Following a long closed session with his subcommittee Oct. 9, when the hearings had been scheduled for completion (Vol. 15:40), Harris announced the headline-winning inquiry would be extended at least through Oct. 12. He would not confirm or deny reports that a House subpoena would be issued for the missing Van Doren. Next business of the subcommittee for an unusual Sat. session Oct. 10, Harris said, probably would be to hear spokesmen for FCC, which already had filed a statement pointing out it has no jurisdictional authority to police quiz shows. NBC v.p.-gen. atty. Thomas E. Ervin announced earlier while testifying on his network’s program “security” policies that Tic Tac Dough producer Howard Felsher had just been dismissed after receiving a subpoena from the subcommittee. “I asked him to give me a sworn state