Variety (January 1953)

xe «1nee<1ay, January 7, 1953 One-To-Fill—Plus while listening to Mel Allen and watching NBC’s «AvVrace of the USC-UCLA game in the Los Angeles Xmorial Coliseum a few weeks ago, I was re- mfnded of my apprentice days in radio at KFI.during i ho ' 90 s and ’30s. It was then, as now, the NBC affili- Itf in Los Angeles, and until NBC established its Hollywood studios, many times fed certain programs and special events to the network. Among many spe- cial events, I recall the first broadcast of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre premiere of “Rain/’ (We introduced a lot of stars, including a very shy guy named Jimmy Durante who, in at burst of confidence, told me it was his first experience before a microphone.) We also originated the first network broadcast of the Tourna- ment of Roses parade, preceding the Rose Bowl game, (That was the morning Graham McNamee refused to admit it was raining, even though the raindrops on the beach umbrellas hastily erected over the mikes sounded like the Australian Woodchoppers in a fast finish.) ; Most of the programs went'off pretty well-—at least we never got notice of cancellation from John El Wood or Phil Carlin, But one nightmare memory was evoked during the Los Angeles Coliseum aircast. In 1932 NBC asked KFI to feed east the first half-hour of the formal opening of the Olympic Games. The big name., of the occasion was Vice-President Charles Curtis*'who came out from Washington to open the Games and deliver a major address. We set the broad- cast for 30 minutes, and I was the announcer. It was an impressive sight—over 1,000 athletes of all nations lined up on the field, massed bands and buglers, and dozens of boxes of white pigeons wait- ing to be released. With due ceremony the bugles blew, the flags of the participating nations were run up to the tops of the flagpoles around the peristyle, the bands blared and the Olympic torch at the top of the eastern end was lighted, as the thousands of white pigeons circled into the sky. At the appointed- moment, Vice-President Curtis stepped to the NBC microphones and the public ad- dress system and said, “I hereby open the 10th Olym- piad of the modern era,’’ and sat down.. Instead of delivering the expected major address, he had left us with about 26 minutes to fill, P. S.: We filled. . Carl Haverlin. Forty-seventh Anniversary RADIO-TELEVISION iips-That-Pass-lnto-the-Mikc By JO RANSON Those newfangled cybernetic monsters have come up with coldly Calculated punch cards revealing that the average free-flowing radio and television'announcer gushes forth something like 9,600 words every 60 minutes, 76,800 pear-shaped utterances during an eight-hour day, 384,000 vocables during a five-day week, and 19^968,000 diminu- tive as well as sesquipedalian words in a 52-week period. For toiling in the verbal vacuum-tubed vineyards the announcers, and their colleagues 1 , the actors, receive enough emoluments to provide handsomely for their crea- ture comforts and the unstinting admiration of their re- spective wives and their considerably more loquacious mothers-in-law. It was Quintus Horatus Flaccus, the old Roman lyricist and satirist, who undoubtedly had our AFTRA members in mind when he Uttered the sage observation that “words once spoken can never be recalled.” .Especially the verbal fluffs, the jinxed.words, the horrible tongue-twisting mori- Finding A Sounder Economic Formula For TV Takes Precedence In ’53 It is virtually impossible td find anyone who does not agree that television’s best shot is the presentation of sports, There may be b,eefs about the coverage of the camera work. But the fact remains that TV has made baseball fans of grandmas arid could make hockey aficionados out of Shad- rack, Meshack arid Abednego. By the same token, there seems to be no one willing to deny that the orthicon tube gave the GOP elephant something to remember. The whole campagin coverage, starting with the two conventions and running right through to where Adlai quoted Abe, turned this nation of hitherto more or less political babies into a mature bunch of active citizens who turned in a total vote greater than any ever Carroll Can . oll before polled. This means something. The meaning will be found in. the same file in which a researcher can locate the meaning for the popularity enjoyed by the TV coverage of the Kefauver Crime Com- mittee hearings. And the reason why spot coverage of anything, when it can be gotten hot, makes TV history. TV is at its double distilled best when,it shows closeups of human beings at grips with a problem. The problem can be one presented by an athletic contest. The problem can be selecting a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. The problem can be forcing a hood to lift his mask. The problem can be putting out a large fire or swimming the Catalina Channel Anytime TV can show the flesh arid spirit at grips with a knotty, circum- stance, it’s laid its electronic hooks, into something, no other medium can duplicate. Naturally,-the problem can’t be a dull one and, since the TV camera is the greatest lie-detector created since the invention of the wife, it had better be on the level. This is why so many panel shows that started out like a ball of fire soon simmered down to a chilly clinker. When they started, they showed men and women chewing at the edges of a solution to. something.' As the show progressed; it became formalized, the problems became standard. The contestants began to know all the angles and most of the answers. The thing got to be gagged and gimmicked in favor of . the panelists and pretty soon it looked as phony as a fixed fight—because it was. By CARROLL CARROLL who does not of life itself—that which represents the creation not only esentation of of writers but of performers, aided and abetted by masters /erage of the of stagecraft, shopld be committed to film; whereas, that, rv has made which gets its main effect from immediacy, spontaneity, improvisation and the impact of personality on personality should be the province of live TV- Thus the sock comics like Bob Hope, Martin and Lewis, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, et al., should be live while the so-called situation comics, those who put ideas and creation over sheer weight of personality, should be filmed. But live or filmed, the day is coming, as the prices rise, when it will be economically unsound for any corporation, no matter how large and financially substantial, to spon- sor a TV show all by itself. Against this day, the net- works and the TV stations had better begin planning, preparing and setting up the era when they sell their time in much the same way that a - magazine sells its space, rroii Carroll This would mean that each network, arid/or each station, would maintain so many hours of entertainment, which , # they would sell, in fixed time segments—such. as. 90 sec-. lie in which a onds, 60 seconds, 30 seconds and 15 seconds—at a pribe JWi ' tie popularity based on. the circulation delivered by the station at the r Crime Com- moment the advertisement was shown. This would involve t coverage of the telecasters discarding the various competitive, commer- rv history. cial and conflicting rating systems and creating for them- hows closeups selves something akin to what the Audit Bureau of Cir- The problem culation is in the magazine field. Must Be True, Real Life | The first big new idea to come along in TV for’53 will not be another way of doing a dramatic show, nor will it be some new angle on a situation comedy. It will be a way of. duplicating, extending and enlarging upon the problems inherent in life . , . as simple, perhaps, as the challenge presented by a TV cooking show that gives us the con- flict growing out of a woman’s meeting with, and her triumph over, a few assorted ingredients and several de- grees of heat, properly applied. It will be the spectacle of a man actually thinking out a solution to something dr figuring out how to avoid the results of his own perfidy. In other words, it will be true, real-life drama photo- graphed and broadcast as it is happening. Following this reasoning to its logical conclusion, you come to a clear line of demarcation between what will one day be the exclusive province of film and what should be the exclusive field for live TV. It would seem that any- thing that relies for its effect on perfection of perform- ance, lighting and sound; that which is purely fictional drama—as opposed to the real, less concentrated drama Better Economic Equation The ABC itself might be induced to extend its services to include the telecasters, make the. necessary surveys, perhaps even invent equipment, map out the mean circu- lation available at each time period during the day on each station, analyze how this varies with different types of programs and performers, and from this mountain of data project a rate-scale that would make it economically more sound than it now is for an advertiser to plunge into the sea of show business that is today causing many a TV sponsor to drown financially. A fixed fee per thou- sand viewers would be charged with minimum guarantees •and refund clauses effective when the minimum is not .met. / A few IBM machirieShnd a couple of Uni vacs might be needed on ; the job, but if we can use our brains and ■machinery tomake war, we should also find a way to use them to make sense. Advertisers don’t presume, except in the widest pos- sible interpretation, to dictate the editorial policy of maga- zines. They buy space in those magazines that deliver a desired circulation at a set rate per thousand. There is no sensible reason why this same scheme cannot prevail in TV. Then, if a network, or a station, does not reach the audience it sets out to reach, does not command the circulation to make possible a profit; it will go out of business. This is where TV stations should go that fail to beam material that attracts interested audiences. Some stations, just as some magazines, may attract highly specialized audiences. They, of course, will create a rate-scale for themselves and attract specialized adver- tisers just as is done in the publication field. It all may be dreamy, but it is nice to think of planned programming that is not subject to the whims of fre- quently incompetent “experts” and programming that is thought out and executed by people who are dependent for their success or failure on the wisdom, knowledge, far- sightedness and intelligence of their planning. It is nice to think and, by thinking, hope that in 1953 TV planning will give us something sounder, more indige- nous to the medium and better related to the economics of good advertising policy than now exists. strosities, the unintentional doubie-entendre that prance out of the vocal chords—-these are. the spoken night- mares that can never be recalled by the embarrassed per- formers. Curiously enough, many of the simplest words and phrases produce blackouts for the announcers. Dick De Freitas, a veteran WMGM announcer, linguistically falls all over himself when he encounters the simple phrases, “True to Tradition.” It usually drips Off his tongue as “True troo tradition.” Kenneth Roberts, the highly-pol- ished WMGM disk jockey, has had difficulty with the simple line, “Eat your cereal, children.” It has frequently emerged as “Eat your children, cereal,” an admonition which seems to disturb children, parents, the program di- rector, the account executive and the sponsor in Battle Creek. When Roberts was doing the Buck Rogers show he was called upon to say: “Here we go 20,000 years into the fu- ture!” But Roberts proudly gave forth with this inter- stellar. mahogany-like introduction: “Here we go, boys arid girls. 20,000 years into the furniture” All departments of radio and television are subject to fluffs and blunders. Eagerly awaited by sports fans, are the word slips of the nation’s top-rated, glib-tongued sportscasters, and virtually all sportscasters have some lulus to their dubious credit. The listening fraternity is still guffawing at the football sportscaster who shouted: His teammates are hugging and kissing him in the. end zone.” • Max for Short 1 A St. Louis sportscaster, in presenting the lineup of the ot. Louis Browns, revealed that “the outfield is still l he shame.that it was.” WMGM sportscaster Marty Glick- i? ai *\l ias t rou ble pronouncing the name of Max Zaslofsky, me N. Y. Knickerbockers leading scorer. Glickman just can t find time to repeat “Zaslofsky” correctly so he cuts j'; sll0l 't to “Max.” Another of Glickman’s problems is his P) enunciation of “statistics,” which invariably emerges as Ward Wilson, Glickman’s side-kick on "f sports .shows, gets his fast-moving tongue twisted e r bespectacled” and usually describes the subject at ™iki as “bespeekled.” Collectors of this type of radioana Va°i ' ^1 the’ baseball sportscaster who described a ■ ‘ tr? t Ii V ba11 game with Joe DiMaggio “backing-backing-- rSpS c Vr all “" his bit it-^itdrops tothe ground—he ™ s «P &nd throws it to third.” This extraordinary omical trick was enough to startle both the Society of American Magicians and the august members of the American Medical Association. Wrong sponsor identification is fairly common on the airlanes. One of Faye Emerson's guests, an English actor, appeared on her Pepsi-Cola show and inadvertently men- tioned the arch-rival Coca-Cola. Replied the savvy femcee, “An Englishman couldn’t be expected to know as much as we do about Pepsi-Cola.” Bob Bryar turns into a bouquet of soft “eshes” when he meets up with the words “Social Security” arid Tedd Lawrence always get himself snafued with the phrase, “The President’s unprecedented action” which is launched as “The Precident’s unpresidented,” and then switched to “Press—prez, prez—press.” It is at this period that the hot flushes come over Lawrence and the going is impossible. The previously mentioned Bryar also had difficulty with the name of Pegeen Fitzgerald, which he launched as “Peagreen” and “Pigeon.” Roger Chase has turned “May we remind you” into “May we wemind you.” Bill Lang, another veteran on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ether outlet in Gotham, would rather walk around the block than say “president.” He makes a determined effort to avoid it by using “chief executive” and other substitutes. ; Another stumbling block for Lang is the sentence, “A special message to the special session of the legislature.” This one also re- ceives a flood of jello“s’s.” Hotel dining room names have been verbal pitfalls for some* of our better announcers. Old timers con$tantly cite Bill Schudt’s “Maroon Reef” for “Marine Roof,” while present day collectors of fluffs single out Phil Goulding who once found himself telling listeners to tune in to the “Wedgerood Woom.” Then there was the NBC announcer who heralded the news that the folks out front had. just heard a recording by “Enrusso Car- rici.” / Several years ago the chronicler of this “fluffy” essay did a similar piece for a Varietv Anni Number in which he recounted the outstanding verbal mishaps of yester- year. Since then the writer’s Hertzian airwave K-9’s have supplied him with more recent examples of choice fluffs. Today’s fluff parade must include Robert Merrill’s “I salute the wen and wirnmen of Texas” and Ralph Ed- wards’ “Buppert’s Rear (Rupperts Beer) is on the air.” In introducing Dorothy Tivis of Figure Heads Agency, Dorothy Doan said: “Dorothy Tivis of Fountain Heads. Oh, I’m sorry, I mean Dorothy Tivis of Cotton Heads.” Robert Montgomery in presenting the play, “And Never - Came Back,” starring Teresa Wright, constantly referred « to her as Martha Scott. Also welcomed into the slips-that- pass-into-the-mike club was the announcer who introduced the investigator as “Mr, Keene, Loser of Traced Persons” as well as the newscaster who gave the details of the “Battle of the Bulgian Belch.” Roy Neal was admitted to the membership when he presented “a program for " your every nude” and Rupe Werling was tapped when he urged the folks to buy “sky-dunked opossum” instead* ’ pf “skunk-dyed opossum.” The ladies Auxiliary "beckoned the tongue-twisted actress on “Counter-Spy” who sought “the offices scounter pies.” More Pillies . At WLW they are still giggling over the arinouncer who, in cathedral tones, urged his audience to buy “Viceroys—if you want a good choke!” And Kathi Nor- ris, demonstrating a moth-exterminating stick in a pastel shade, insisted on saying, “this exterminator comes in a pastel stink.” Burl Ives in accepting a scroll from Rus- sel Crouse put it rather bluntly when he said “I want to thank Mr. Brussel Rouse for this screwl,” and how simple it was for the Minneapolis announcer to herald the fact that his program was sponsored by the “Rancid Trapit Company.” Elliot Lawrence performed a radio Munsey when he merged Arthur Murray and Morey Am- sterdam as “And now, America’s dance master, Murray Amsterdam.” Moss Hart's “spoose” for “spouse” made him a close kin of the late Graham McNamee whose “gasaloon” for “gasoline” was a two-gallon howler two decades ago. Colleagues Went into mourning for the CBS performer who gave these directions for. setting a table “Place the sports and foons on the . . Then hie tried it once more: “I mean.the sporks and sphoons , . .!” Then he tried it a third time: “Of course I mean the porks and soons . . .!” Both Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. Slipslop had a fine time in their respective crypts at this perplexed point in the announcer’s career. . The honi , soit qui mal y pense hombres guffawed themselves into bellyaches when a certain announcer commented as follows in a recent newscast: “Well, we have a new Miss America, a Georgie piece* I mean peach —er—a lady from Georgia.” Our learned sawbones tell us that the tongue helps in mastication, deglutition and sound articulation arid that it is tied to the hyoid bone by muscles, to the epiglottis by the glosSo-epiglottidean (move over to the frairiis, “Dr,” Al Kelly) folds, and to the soft palate by the an- terior pillars. It is this particular muscular organ on the ground floor of the mouth that is a= contributory factor in aerial fluffomania. The proboscis—excuse it, please—the prog- nosis, ain’t good.