Variety (July 1949)

39 Wt^liirsilaf, July 27, 1949 RAMO-TRI.R^'ISION Television— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Its Growth Is Same As Radio's Only More So-TV Can Give Sponsor Magical Sales Force, Bui Also a 12-Aspiriii Headache Now — Says a Bankroller Who Knows m There It Stands — Legit By RUSSEL CROUSE Almost half a century ago I was asked by a publicspirited publication, Godey’s Ladies Book, whether the automobile would ever take the place of the horse. My answer was an emphatic “Nol” The years have found me right. Give me a pleasant afternoon, a Racing Form, Joe Lewis and $2 and I’ll find you a horse anytime you want one. Today another public-spirited publication, Variety, has asked me another question: “Will television replace, di.splacc or affect ttie legitimate theatre?” My answer again i.s “No!”. Come back in another half a century, and you will find that time again has^ proven me right. But in the meantime, stop bothering me I'm sick and tired of hearing about things that are going to take the place of other things. First it was the piano. The phonograph was going to take the place of the piano. Piano manufacturers and even pian«) owners were crying in their beer all over the place That "was many years ago. Where is the piano today? Right where it alw'ays has been — by the spinning wheel in the parlor. It not only has survived the phonograph. It has survived Jimmy Durante. Just as the phonograph settled down to a peaceful existence, along came the radio. Every sourpuss in America immediately predicted that the radio would take the place of the phonograph. Here it is 1949 and I w'ilJ make a rough guess that more records of “South Pacific” alone will he .sold this year than the complete sales total of records in the year the radio fir.st burst upon us. Comes now television and the wide sweeping claims that it will take the place of practically everything with the po.ssihle exception of sex. I haven’t been asked to speak on the subject of sex. so you are mi.ssing something pretty good. My subject is the legitimate theatre and why television won’t take its place. I’ve spoken on the subject — last summer in John Crosby’s column in the N. Y. Herald Tribune and more recently as quoted liy Fred Allen in Life — so if you are fed up with my opinions turn to “Inside Stuff — Pictures.” My reason for doubting television’s encroachment on the tfieatre is my feeling that it will never lie able to compele with the theatre in material. The enlertainmeiil world has now e.xpanded to the point at wliicli il resembles a great dragon eating ideas and words. Who’s going to feed this dragon’s many mouths’.’ Television is Hie latest of these mouths, and at the moment the hungriest. t.et me illustrate what I mean in Hie tlieatre we bring forth 70 or 80 new filays a year. These plays average about 14.000 words eacli— which adds up to not much more than a million words a year. Of these 70 or 80 pla^s a year we are very fortunate if l.'i are hits. But when a jilay is a hit its 14,000 words go on working for many months, sometimes years. The only reasons for producing a play are that someone believes it is good enough to attract an audience or so good that it must be pre.sented to the public whether il attracted an audience or not. So the standards of the theatre are high. ^ When the motion picture entered the field of enlertainmenl. and particularly when it began to talk, the standards were lowered. This was true first because its output was greater. It had to have more ideas, more words, and the double-feature doubled the demand. The spoken word had to be spread thinner. In the theatre, playwrights wrote plays because idea.s burned their way through their minds. Most |>la>s have to he wrillen. Inspiration is the first factor. The motion picture brought with it Ijircd writing. Writers weie eiiiplo.\ed to work on ideas that were nol their own. They were paid by the week. .Again standards came down. With the advent of the radio the spoken word had to he stiread again, still thinner. This time another faitor entered the .scene. Radio programs were nol wrillen lo fill Ihealres hut. still woi'se. they were wrillen to fill time schedules. In radio, silence is not golden .A radio station is on the air a certain number of houi-s a day Within I hat range it must always he heard, whether il has .inylhing to sa.N or nol. A certain amount of its lime niiisl he taken up by music — and here some repetition is perinilled. But when it speaks it must say something new. And if the segment of time from, lot us say. fi to 8:81). cannot he filled with bright words, it must have dull words or musil-. And .so. again, standards ha\e been lowered. The films and radio have developed some good writing. Some brilliant writing, of their own. hut not enough to fill theatres and time schedules — the dragons’ mouths And here i.s television. Here ai-e new hours lo he filled. Who’s going lo fill them’* .At the moment Milton Berle is its bright and shining star. Berle is a very funny man. But Berle can’t wear funny hats and make faces. He has to tell jokes. When radio was young Ed Wynn was its bright and shining star. Wynn told jokes. “I used to tell about 60 jokes on each program.” Wynn once told me. “But I discovered something. There weren’t that many jokes.” How did I get into all this pontificating? Oh. \e.s. Variety asked me W'hether television would ever affect the legitimate theatre. My answer is “No!” But who «m I to talk? There are those who say the atomic bomb is going to eliminate me. By CHARLES G. MORTIIHER, JR. tVTce President, Marketing. General Foods Corp.) As an advertiser my point of view with respect to television is entirely different from that of a broadcaster, a producer, or anyone in show busine.ss. I’m interested in the appearance on the horizon of another major medium for the entertainment and enlightenment of people and the resulting sale of commercial products lo them. Why do I .say television at present is a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the advertiser? Very simply because it can be an unprecedented sales and advertising force — a new, magical way of selling pi*oducts. But it also has presented the adverti.ser with the doggondest. 12-aspirin headache he’s had since the early developmental day s of commercial radio. That analogy to radio Is. of course, neither new or startling, but it’s so correct that it might stand repeating by a guy who goes back as far as the Happiness Boys, the Atwater Kent Hour, and a little gem I myself had a hand in perpetrating on an unsuspecting public, called Sahka The Seer. Those were the very early days but it wasn’t long before radio had the kind of Jack-and-the-Beanstalk growth wtiich television is having* now. This was attended by the jockeying for choice time spots; the trial and error of different show techniques; the discovery we made, for in.slance, that a show' crammed with the biggest film names in the world couldn’t draw as large an audience as relatively unknown people w ho had the radio touch. There’s one big difference between radio’s early days and television’s: In radio you had a chance to get in the game if you had a good bid with a stack of white chips — in television, for national advertisers like ourselves, it takes .several stacks of hlues to find out whether you’ve got a pair of deuces or a full house. This frankly is giving some advertisers pause, although there are a few whose declarations to concentrate entirely in television have been carried in the new’spaper columns. Time FranchiRe: Money in llie Hank | And remember, the advertiser’s investment is entirely a :speculalion with the present tendency of the networks lo decide what show goes in which time. There’s little chance of building up a sponsor-controlled television time franchise which is as valuable as money in the hank to the ad\’erti.ser. While it is true that the broadcasters have their iiTvestmenl in equipment to think about —and it’s a mighty big one — the advertiser is the angi'l who provld(*.s the money for time, talent, rehear.sals and all Ihal, and provides it in bunches with, in our experience, a one-outof-three chance of hitting the bull’s eye. However. I’d like to get back to that happier topic of the unprecedented sales force which television can he In evaluating any advertising medium we usually .seek three basic factors first, size or mas.s — a means of reaching large numhiMs of people simultaneously; second, opportunity lo sell — to select our customers and find them in a receptive mood with adequate facilities for telling them our stoiy; and. third, affordable f^o.st — a pretty important element if we plan to stay in busine.ss very long. For the piescnt and for the next couple of years. I frankly think television will measure up only on one of these three counts, at least, for many of our kind i>f proilucts. At the end of 19.50 it is expected there might be 5.000.000 sets in operation. This is a year and a half away and hardly compares with the 78.000,000 radio .seff; now in use, or the fact that we could now' gel more circulalion than television will afford in 19.50 by using ju.st one leading weekly magazine I do not think, it) the literal senst*. that television w'ill be a tnass national advertising medium soon for two reasons: 1 Station facilities, or more correctly, the lack of. Wtule the co-axial cable has linked the east with Chicago on three circuits, the relatively small number of TV stations precludes the existence of anything approximating the four major national radio hookups now available. 2 Television set costs will he a deterrent to mass buying for quite some time. While set prices are hi*coming cheapci as production increases, a television set i.s niore complicated than a radio set and it is unlikely, therefore, that TV sets will get down very soon lo the $100 level or below, which might be tin* breaking point for mass buying. y __ Ih It AffonluMe? “ J As far as the affordable cost factor is concerned, for the next few years, at least, television is definitely not affordable for many of our General Foods products, and only time will tell if television v\ill become affordable f))r them. Bid when we come to the opportunity-lo-sell factor, tele\i.sion i.s hard to beat as an advertising medium. House-tohouse demonstration has long been highly rated for sales effectiveness. Television, engaging both sight and hearing. offers the closest approach yet lo simultaneous, mass home demonstration. We can show our product in action in the liome with a complete and convincing demon.slration of how it look.s. how it works, what it does. We, can do this while the family is relaxed, receptive, and attentive — a mood the best hou.se-to-hou.se salesmen rarely encounter There’s no getting around it. television is a unique opportunity among advertising media, supplying as it does the facilities for doing our best selling. This is true today, and with the help of better programming will be even truer tomorrow. Will television send radio to the show'ers? Will families THE ANXIOUS ROVING EYE H. ALLE> The technical people in TV deserve much commendation for the gadgets and gimmicks I hey ’re thought up, but they’ve overlooked the problem of the anxious roving eye. It happens that I am a writer but I have abandoned that vocation and turned inventor. Just a minute ago I finished inventing a device for the use of Douglas Edwards, John Cameron Sway/.e and Jhe rest of the boys who do television news. I call my invention the Smith Whirling News Report, Model B. Fool Operated. Let me de.scribe it . The teleca.ster’s script is typed on a long roll of paper, about the width of a connnon bathroom roll. Dii-eetly In front of the telecaster, on his desk, is a small calendar pad. tilted toward the comntentator and away from the H. Alim Smith camera. The news retiort feeds through this false calendar gadget at a speed controlled by a foot-pedal under the desk. Use of the Smith Whirling New's Report will do away with the eye-roving which is one of the major distractions on television. The thing can be rigged so that the telecaster appears to be looking directly at the audience, whereas he is pedaling away and reading the script as il unwinds beftne his eyes. Now that this problem has been solved. I’m turning to a more serious one. It, too. involves eye-roving. Thus far television has nol found a method to cue a performer properly, telling him the folks are now looking at him, and for gahd sakes to get started. This is true on all programs, and especially in Dramatic I*i'oducti))ns. 1^ P'm a D'** **** Unct* I Time after time when the screen credits are finished and the fanfare over, the camera suddenly gives us the opening moments of Scene One. We see an actor looking pop-eyed off to the left, and then maybe off to the right, and licking his lips, and twitching with uncertainty, and then somewhere he gets the signal and calms right down and begins setting the table or picking up the book or cross-examining the witne.ss. 'I'lie thing that i.s needed here is a sort )>f radar nudger, I think. .At the very instant il^e actoi appears on the .si’i’een, an electronic impulse shoAils out and gives him a slight prod. That tells him In* is to start speaking, or begin the action. This will do away with a di.sconcerting effect . . . so many actors ami aclr»*s.ses appear, at the opening of a scene, to be in a stale of shock, us if Ole Hitler himself had just apt)ean*d six «)r eight feet off to one side of the camera. Come to think of it. if I gelthe r.adar prodder perfected, I think I’ll have it function a second or two before the image appears on the screen. If the two coincided, too many plays would open with an actor or actress leaping like a startled faun, and In some cases .screeching, according to his or her su.sceptibility. That last point, however, is a qiiibbh*. Now, as for what’s to be done about ‘ Sponsors Nix Top Coin Stars. . . .” 1 think maybe I’ll take up writing again. devote le.ss lime and attention lo new'spapers and magazines in the future? I don’t know the answers, but it Is interesting to note that newspapers, magazines, and radio circulations in the last 25 years have all grown enormously despite the fact that they all compele among themselves for the individual’s time and attention. It’s entirely possible that television may also produce new and additional circulation without matei’ially reducing other media because people are continually finding the additional time they need to be informed and to b<* entertained. [ Still a Haul Micad | We in General Foods are nol in the entertainment business. We have no desire to become involved in radio and now television program production, tint if that's the way to sell certain General Foods’ products most efficiently and most economically, that becomes our job. We are concerned with the high cost still attached to radio shows and on almost any television sliow which is currently being offered. .Some of them are pretty pour prospective values and expensive speculations We think television has made rai»id strides in program development and diversification considering how young It is. but it has a long, long way to go in this direction. The question before the house in regard to television as an advertising medium is; can we hope for belter programs and thus more sets and thus more opportunity to sell In the face of the high cost of talent and production, which at present audience levels works out as being generally uneconomical in term-s of sales resuits.