Variety (Jul 1946)

Wednesday, July 81, 1946 RADIO 23 EYE DAYTIMERS AS P.M. TEST Major Nets Reach $16,807,636 For May; Top Mark of a Year Ago Gross billings for the month of May, 1946, on the four major networks kept going upward, in comparison to 1945 figures. The four big ones piled up business going over the $18,000,000 mark again, with small drops on ABC and CBS being compensated, in the aggregate, through an increase on NBC and a very healthy rise in Mutual billings. For the five-month period, Jan.-May, 1846, the four nets billed a total of $83,729,891 worth of business,'compared with the 1949 five-month figure of $79,988,308. . The figures: - NETWORK GROSS TIME SALES (Estimated) FOB MAT 1946 NBC $5,795,976 ABC *. .'. 3.489,157 cbs ;: S475jro. Mutnil 2,287,233 NBC .. ABC . CBS .. Mutaal $16,807,638 FOB FIRST FIVE MONTHS (Estimated) 1946 ., ....$28,020,448 17,597,054 28,658,003 11,454,388 $83,729,891 1945 $5,535,580 3.609,944 5.618.030 1,579,942 $18,343,496 1945 $26,693,248 - 17.794,030 28.053,714 7,443,316 $79,986,308 NBC to Devote % Hours Oct 13-14 In 250G Ballyhoo of New Season Sked A program showcasing a ballyhoo-t campaign has been mapped by NBC in preparation for shifts in the fall season's Sunday and nighttime schedule shakeup. Major program time shifts will be emphasized, new shows and shows - that have come from other nets will be plugged widely, and the en- tire cavalcade will be aired on two coast-to-coast shows spotted for a full two hours on Sunday, Oct. 13, and for 90 minutes Monday night, Oct. 14. NBC has. already begun to beat the drums among the affiliates, , f with special promotional material lined up and a dozen different gadgets offered to the locals, rang- ing from plastic cases for lobby and window displays to trailers for local film houses, recordings for lo- cal airings and scripts for local live shows. ° 'Details of the plan were unfold- ed in a. closed-circuit round-robin last week by net prexy Niles Tram- mell; veepee in charge of program- ming Clarence L. Menser; Easton C. Woollcy, director of the station's departments; Sydney H. Eiges, man- ager of the press dept., and Charles P. Hammond, ad-promotion director, who emceed the proceedings. It wasn't officially discldsed how much NBC Is spending to publicize the season's program changes, but it was estimated that the total cost would come to about $250,000. In addition, Hammond and eastern: sales manager George H. Frey have- (Continued on page 55) 'Children' in Shift "Bachelors' Children," on CBS for Continental Baking Co., is-mov- ing up.'the time ladder on Sept. 30. Show will take the 11:30 a.m. slot. It's now in the 10:45 time. Ted Bates is the agency. Radio Packages Also Tax-Probed A la Pix Setup Sweeping ukase of the Federal Bureau of Internal Revenue which put the quietus on single-picture corporations as a form of income tax avoidance may have its reper- Comprehensiue • roundup on the Revenue Dept's ititensi/ied drive ooainst the single-picture cnpilal-gatMs corporations o>i P. 4. Interlocking pii-radio per- sonalities work interchangeably iu both /ields. Air Newsies Form So. CaL Outfit Hollywood, July 30. An association of radio newsmen in southern California is in the pro- cess of formation. Group of news- roomers met at station KMPC here July 25 to lay the groundwork. The purpose of the outfit is* to develop news sources, increase the coverage of local news and improve the standards of handling news for broadcast: Group is In no way a union but will devote itself exclusively to the foregoing plans, which will includ.e a drive to beat local newspapers at their own freczeout game.* An objective committee and a membership committee were named at the initial meeting. Chct Hunt- ley, of CBS, heads the former, and Fred Henry, of KLAC, will direct membership work. The stations have been placed in three classifications, hot work, and indies with and with- out regular newsrooms. A second meeting will be held Aug. 8. cushions in other branches of the amusement, world, the wo v d from Washington- has it. While Treasury Dept. inquiry so far has been di- rected almost solely towards Holly- wood, leading exemplar of the per- sonal corporation/ the Internal Rev- enue Bureau will apply its new rule "wherever the shoe fits." according to Commissioner Joseph D. Nu- nan, Jr. Questioned specifically on the ra- dio phase of the tax question, Com- missioner Nunan said that no action had been taken but that the rule would be applied to any relevant situation. Crackdown, in that event, would be directed against a num- ber of package deals in which a pro- gram has been incorporated and producer and talent payments were taken in the'form of a capital gain following liquidation of the corpora- tion, tax experts say. Any setup in which a single show, or a-series.of performances were poured into a coi'.iorale mould with personal serv- ice payments made by a divvy of company assets following liquida- tion will probably take it on the chin from the bureau's new regula- tion, the experts believe. DEA CHEAPER FOR NETWORKS By SAUL CABSON Afternoon programming as a reservoir for nighttime material may be developed next season by the; major .networks as a result of the tight night schedules on which it's becominjg increasingly 'impos- sible to test new program ideas without Incurring high time costs. The nighttime schedules, on all of the major webs, are practically filled for next season, despite the lugubrious breast-beating that fol- lowed last spring's $10,000,000 worth of cancellations. , NBC has lines waiting for any possible. spots that might be open,- one nighttime spot as yet unplaced being sought by at least seven pos- sible bankrollers. Mutual and ABC billings for the first six months of the year showed increases in the. gross time. sales, with ABC's being just above 1945's, and Mutual's still climbing after reaching 47% above last year's figures. Cat and the. Canary . At CBS, execs are wearing a cat- that-swallowed-the-canary look and are warning one another against overconfldence as a result of the flock of business spotted recently, including the pacting of Lowell Thomas, Dinah Shore and Phil Spi- talny for radio, and the. Ford-spon- sored Madison Square Garden sportscasts or. television. This line- up, added to the .fact that board chairman William S. Paley has set aside rumors that he Intended to unload a chunk of his stock, has made for a healthy stability. CBS chieftains point out that, while they are already set for. the fall, they are nevertheless willing and able to put on new shows, if good ones come along. Their night- time schedule is full, but they have more than two hours of afternoon time open. The only definite Mon.- Fri. shows down for the afternoon hours between 3 and 6 so far are the General Electric stanza from 4 to 4:25, and the "School of the Air" from 5 to 5:30. The situation is similar on .the three : other webs, where bnly day- time spots are open and execs are quite willing to leave them open for the time being, hoping that something worth showcasing may come along for the afternoon hours. They figure that, since some of the shows signed up for the fall night air are, by the usual rule, bound to fall on their faces—they might as well use the afternoon hours as programming reservoirs on which new material can be tested as smaller time-costs. Then, when a spot opens at night, an afternoon show that's made good can be pro- moted to the nighttime schedule. Radio Execs, Union Leaders Worried Over Job Decline for Actors, Writers, Producers; Fear Trade Exodus Harmon Follows Disk Trend Chicago,. July 30. Despite a sponsor and network guarantee to Tom Harmon of 80 stations, this fall, as against the 56 outlets he had for his Clipper, Craft Clothes-sponsored sportcast on Mu- tual last fall, the ex-All American from Michigan has passed up the live- deal and signed for a football forecast series on platters for the coming season.. Season, titled "Here Comes Her- man," is a Vick Knight package and will be produced by Criterion Radio Features, Chi,. as a quarter-hour open-ender, to be presented once weekly. . A cooperative deal, it'll run for 13 weeks and will Include besides the regular intercollegiate schedule, predictions on Bowl games. i Radio Gets Further Slice In Exodus to H wood Chicago, July 30. There'll be about 25 Chicago radio thesps who'll have a large' slash made in thefir income as of Sept. 2, when three-quarters of the General Mills Hour—i. e., ^Today's Children," "Masquerade" and "Woman in White" — start broadcasting from Hollywood. "Guiding Light" is stay- ing in Chi, pending outcome of Em- mons Carlson's argument with pro- ducer Carl Wester and script super- visor Irna Phillips over ownership of the show. Shortage of Coast. studio space hasn't been too much of a headache, according to Wester, with arrange- ments now being made to broadcast some of the shows from KFI because of limitations at NBC. Withal, it'll be a case of "Chicago in Hollywood" for the gang going, with most prin- cipals of the shows already Coast- bound or due to leave soon. Miss Phillips has already .taken oft. and Wester has bought Marion and Jim Jordan's home. Art Gladd, writer of both "Masquerade" (al- ready being aired from Hollywood) and "Children." is also on the Coast, as are Ned LeFevre, Sondra Gair and. Jack Petruzzi of the "Masquer- continued on page 34) New SSC&B Tees Off With $2,200,000 Accounts, Emphasis on Package Goods The war-years' honeymoon be- tween ad agencies and clients, when i ? cared particularly how much of Uncle Sam's excess profits taxes were spent on institutional adver- tising, is now over. From here on in it's going to be a tough battle for advertising clients, with the big agencies engaging in a battle royal for the multi-million dollar accounts Millions of dollars' worth of ad- vertising business 's going to change hands. This has been emphasized with the entry into the field of the latest of the big agencies, Sullivan, StaulTer, Colwell & Bayles. This out- fit has already taken away $2,200,- 000 of advertising—divided almost equally between the print and radio ir.--' : ". And SSC&B has just barely begun. Trade predictions this week w-re that the. personnel of this new agency indicates that much more will be taken away from the older advertising organizations. SSC&B, starting out with the Noxzema and Smith Bros, accounts is going to specialize in package goods . That's where the big battle w ilt be fought as far as advertising I agencies are c ncerned, since these industries are already fighting , for the consumer's dollar. . ""■-> nnw agency's lineup of execs and dept. heads hal been fairly well completed by this v -ek, wltn only a couple of major spot; open— particularly those who will head up m —i r(!Searc h. ~" five top men—Raymond F. Sul''-"n S. Hcagan Bayles, Donald D. Stauffcr. Robert T. Colwell and John P. Cohane—include four for- mer execs of Ruthrauff & Ryan agency and one (Colwell) from J. W..''.cr Thompson. Sullivan is prexy, and Cohane is secretary of the con- cernj with the treasury-general p-anagc - job going to a drug mer- chandising expert, T. Newton Wealherby. Latter had been treas- i' - r and ad-sales manager for Em- erson Drug Co. Philip Cohan, formerly of R&R, '' o OWI, and ABSIE, has been brougM over to head up rad ; - pro- duction in N. Y., and John Van I Nostrand will head up radio in ^Hollywood. Joe Thompson, former- ly with NBC arid Army Special I (Continued on page 36) Radio actors, writers and pro- ducers—some of- whom have done top work in the past—are walking the streets of. the big production centers in droves, and a number of radio executives as well as union. leaders in the ftyld are expressing concern over the situation. Each of the groups concerned ex- presses itself in different terms: but in the aggregate their gripes mount up to a feeling that there's some* thing wrong with radio for not be- ing able to absorb existing talent while everybody is crying for de- velopment of fresh talent. Among the performers, the com- plaints are aimed mostly at pro- ducers and directors. They claim that, regardless of their status in the profession, or Veteran status for that matter, they simply don't get audi- tions, that directors, as of old, favor a tight crew of favorites for. all shows that come along. The union people are concerned because they fear that joblessness, when it becomes widespread, tends to establish a reservoir of potential . anti-union people' who- might be counted on by anti-labor forces in case of trouble. Both union and radio execs, how- ever, are concerned with another aspect. They fear that radio is driv- ng people out of the business just -at a time when it should be attract- ing more new talent. They are aware of the fact that joblessness in the talent ranks right now is greater than it has been, probably, since the pre-war depression. Execs are not ready to agree that the development of audience-partici- pation shows had added to the tough labor market. They'insist that, after all, producers and directors, as well as musicians, continuity writers, and even some actors, are used also on these audience shows. Radio Ad Brush By Retailers Washington, July 30. Despite heavy propaganda from the National Assn. of Broadcasters and radio men throughout the coun- try, retailers are still shying away from buying radio time to plug their wares. Study just made, public by the National Retail Dry Goods Assn. shows that only a traction of re- tailers are putting the effort Into radio that goes into publication ad- vertising. Only two-thirds of the 300 retail stores covered in the survey used radio advertising in 1945, and only a fourth of the sample had radio advertising directors on their pay- rolls. Although the entire batch predicted overall expansion in their advertising, less than 25% expected to boost the percentage devoted to radio. The association's study con- cluded that "somewhere, somebody is failing to give radio the proper push'so far as retail advertising is concerned." Eire Moves Ahead On Radio Set Manufacture Washington, July 30. Manufacture of radio receivers in Ireland, which got a big boost dur- ing the war, is still moving ahead, U. S. Department of Commerce re- ports. Most recent development has been the sharply increased duties on imported sets to protect the domes- tic, manufacturers. Prior to the war. about 10.000 sets were assembled annually in Eire from parts mostly imported from Britain. When the war cut off most of Die imported parts, the Irish be- gan to produce their own.