Variety (Dec 1939)

Wednesday, December 6^ 1939 SHOWMANSHIP SURVEY VARIETY 21 ♦ ♦ ♦ CITED FOR SHOWMANSHIP ♦ ♦ ♦ plaques annually awarded by Varii-ty in con- jmiclion with its radio showmanship survey are annomucd herewith. They include a special joint award to Ihc Radio Corporation of America and its subsidiary, the National Broadcasting Company, for j)ioncerinp in the realm of television programs, a largely thankless and wholly unprofitable under- taking which represents sheer investment, sheer venture and, in its best sense, sheer showmanship. Television today rtiay be very little like television tomorrow. The rate of progress is suHicicnllv rapid to suggest that. Nevertheless KC.\-XP.C has by itself advanced both / the day and the art of television so markedly during the year 1939 that in testimony of both the efl'ort and the achievement a showmanship plaque is unques- tionably warranted. Prom the beginning of the New York World's Fair and continuing thereafter on regu- lar schedule the RCA-NBC television program producers have, with the expected num- ber of errors among the many trials, steadfastly demonstrated an ever-improving capacity for handling the new medium of communication and entertain- ment handed them by their en- gineers. ;\. solid residue of ex- perience and technique has now been aiciimulated which will not only i)encfit RCA-NBC in the future development of tele- vision but will be an intangible ' asset in the portfolio of all other corporations or impresari that may hereafter enter the new art. All of the persons who have f contributed to the advance of * television, as a future exteu- i sion of radio broadcasting, can- I not be individually credited * but it seems appropriate to ? mention several men in author- I ity: A. II. Morton, Max Gor- J don, Thomas Hutchinson. ♦ As to the radio stations here- j by cleclcd to the company of | V.\rii;tv plaque winners it is £ believed that all of the selec- + tions will appeal to informed 5 observers as plausible. As J usual the task has been enor- j mously diflicult. Perhaps the jt difficulty is symbolically indi- I cated in the final decision to * accommodate the pressure ♦ within the farm service cate- J gory hy making three awards. + There has been a great i'ficrease + in the miniber of stations ap- -k pealing to the rural audience * .and in the methods and mcas- * itires now generally employed. « An outside source, the Agri- J cultural Marketing Service of * the I'nitcd States Department .^i of Agriculture, reports that in | the past two years the number + of stations carrying croj> in- I formation has risen by 160 and 1 at present some 345, or nearly | half llie total of American | broadcasters, provide profes- 1 sional news to plow-jockeys. + This is one suggestive facet. + In several- cases stations that | previously did little in rusticity | have fundamentally redesigned J basic policv. Such a station was WBT, Charlotte, North Carolina and the activities adopted there to make the S0,00O-watter mean more in the lives of the farmers appealed to the judges as showmanly. KMA, Shenandoah, Iowa, and WNAX, Yankton, South Dakota, which also receive farni awards have, more steadily than \V P.l, Ik'C" identified notably with the outlying districts. Lach station seemed a well-balanced oxaniplar of the shrewd and the practical. KMA, a veteran, has the practiced hand of long experience and in its presi- dent, I'.arl May, has one of the authentic personal- ities of farm broadcasting. WNAX definitely re- flects touches of the slick Cowlcs management into whose hands the station has pas.sed. WBT, in winning a farm service award under the management of Lincoln Dellar, repeals station his- lorv. While under William Schudfs direction the station was given the network-managed designation. Three of the 1939 plaque winners are repeats. WLW, Cincinnati, has its third award, and WSM, Nashville, its second. While the judges were not without qualms that the 50.(X)0-watter, as such, mightisecm to be running away with the awards it. was im'possible to deny the crushing weight of solid performance. WLW since its forced return to 50 kw. has o])ened the valves and nothing comparable to the campaign that followed has come to the at- tention of the Variety survey since its inccptidh in 1933. WSM had no trouble in demonstrating a I Plaques Awarded for 1939 t i i « i ♦ { * ■ ♦ PROGRAM ORIGIISATim STATION KMBC, Kansas City ★ * PRESTIGE SUBSIDIARY STATION WSM, Nashville WRVA, Richmond ★ ★ ★ NEWSPAPER-OWNED STATION WMC, Memphis KFBK, Sacramento ★ * ★ NETWORK-MANAGED STATION WRC-WMAL, Washington ★ ★ ★ NATIONALLY-EXPLOITED STATION WLW, Cincinnati ★ ★ * COMMUNITY-EXPLOITED STATION KTSA, San Antonio SPORTS STATION WWSW. Pittsburgh ★ ★ ★ PART-TIME STATION WSUN, St. Petersburg, Florida ments congenial to shows and talent. A man with a non-theatrical background, Arthur Church, has consistently stacked his chips on showmanship. It has paid off handsomely. The trade in general will hardly dispute the deservingncss of KMBC to its award. For the newspaper-owned station award there were quite a number of well-operated units seriously in the running. The final choice of WMC, Mem- phis, will, in the east, secnv less surprising perhaps than the duplicate award to-far-off KFBK, Sacra- mento. There is ahVays the feeling that the west coast is a strange zone of which not much is heard and, for that reason, not much is presumed to happen. The Sacramento Bee station, however, has a very tightly integrated arrange- ment- between paper-station-, public. In this case the loca- tion of the station in a fairly self-contained rich valley has colored tlic picture with unique values that made an impres- sion. WRV'A, Richmond, as an alert and many-sided organiza- tion spread out competitively in 1939 and seemed on the w! ole a good example of showmanly behavior under the happy au- spices of a non-radio owner- ship. It accordingly was tagged for a prestige-subsidiary token. KOIN, Portland, Oregon, appelation as 'social service station' may be interpreted as mirroring the judges' respect for a iiice all-around home town job. There wasn't much to choose in the part-time cate- gory but WSUN, St. Peters- burg, Florida, made a case under admittedly - uninspiring handicaps (only three days a week). Because the funda- mental wish of the Varif.ty awards is to encourage and stimulate that which is show- manly the WSUN plaque seems justified. The sports station award which has only j been given twice may be abol- J is " SOCIAL SERVICE STATION KOIN, Portland, Oregon * ★ ★ FARM SERVICE STATION KMA, Shenandoah, Iowa WNAX, Yankton, S. D. WBT, Charlotte, N. C. ★ * * CANADIAN STATION CFCF, Montreal > . * * * 4- * t I i * * * * SPECIAL AWARDS RCA-NBC LUCKY STRIKE For Television Program Pioneering For Consistent Sponsor Showmanship ************************************************************************** claim to a place in the fastest comi^any. l^ecansc of the very important advantage of being able to charge off to the parent. National Life Insurance, some of the adventures of the child the slatiun lias a surprising range of showmanly activities. One or two of these seemed on the sTtly side to the judges hut the accumulation of merit prevailed. In view of the fairly widespread neglect by sta- tions of original program activities (as treated in the preface to this survey under the caiUion 'The Local Program Director's Dilemma") those few sta- tions which comport themselves in the time-hon- ored manner of showmen are not hard to distinguish in the throng of broadcasters whose motto is 'so what?" Whole attitude at KMBC, Kansas City, produces one of the industry's few local ciiviron- shed after this year (probably in favor of an educational award) so that WWSW, Pitts- burgh, may be the last winner. Its sports activities are varied and fairly smart. As regards Canada, where the rate of progress is neces- sarily slower, VARiiiTV skipped awards in 1937 and 1938, but CFCI'' seemed to be a 'best' for 1939. The absence of any award this year for foreign-language stations foreshadows the prob- able abandonment of this cate- gory by V'ariety in 1940. Mention of the 1939 si)onsor ])laque is reserved to the last. A year ago Vakikty expressed professional appreciation for the showmanslii]) of Lever Brothers and Atlantic Refin- ing. The thinking behind \'a- RiKTv's decision to expand rec- ognition into the field of the spon.sor was not surprising to those in the trade who re- member that this publication has steadfastly insisted that no sponsor spending mijlions of dollars on radio programs coiild indefinitely continue to regard liiniself as divorced from all showmanly re.si)0 nsi biI i ty. The sponsor, not the advertising agency, must answer to the board. The con.sistency of I-iicky Strike radio programs through the years and the continuance of this suc- cessful picking and supervising into 1939 (notably in the Kay Kyser stanza; strongly focused the at- tention of this survey upon the shownian-s])onsor, George W, Hill of the .American Tobacco Co. Ilill has been using radio shrewdly for a decade and al- most never has purchased popularity with exces- sively high-priced talent. On the whole. Lucky Strike shows have been moderate in cost, bespeak- ing showmanly union of cost and results.