Variety (March 1953)

^AiKO-TELEVlSm 34 Pfi&lWff Wednesday, March 11, 1953 New York Paul Mowrey, WABC-TV station topper, vacationing in Virgin Isles. . . . George Dunham, WOBS^TV sales chief, in Chi this- we^k?'Visit- ing CBS-TV spots sales offices‘-and- agencies < . . NBC veepee Ed Mad- den speeks at Public Relations Society luncheon in N. Y. March 18 on TV and opportunities for P. R. . . . Johnny Pavelko guests on Kate Smith's NBC-TV show Monday (16) . . . Ronald Dawson doing a lecture series on TV at the Fearing School. Margaret. Arlen’s guests Friday (13) on WCBS-TV include Sheila Bond and Paul Valentine, stars of Broadway’s “Wish You Were Here,” producer-director-co-author Joshua Logan, designer Jo Micl- ziner and others from the show, giving a backstage picture of the production . . . Sam Henry, Jr. added to ABC-TV as account exec; William R. Arnold joins WABC-TV as account exec . . . Vincent T. Edwards moves from radio to pro- duction assistant with WABC-TV . . . Mrs. Robert Ripley, sister of Arthur Godfrey who has her own show on KPHO-TV, Phoenix, guests on Art Linkletter’s “House Party” Monday (16) . . . Isabel Redman, producer of CBS-TV's “Lamp Unto My Feet,” lectures on religious radio and tele for the Washington (D. C.) archiocese . . . Bud Palmer, who handles the com- mentary for the college and pro basketball games via WP1X, doing the commentary -for the National Invitation Tournament ... Monde Brown and Leo Trachenberg, di- rector and cameraman of El A1 Israel Airlines’ WABD show, “In- side Israel, off to Israel for two weeks location filming for the pro- gram . , . WPIX fed the Niagara- Brigham Young tilt in the first round of the National Invitation Basketball tourney Monday (9) to WBEN-TV in Buffalo, home of the Niagara team . . . Lee Polk named director of WABD's “One Man’s Story” . . . Charles J. Correll, “Amos and Andy” co-creator, and his ‘ wife on a three-wfeek Latin America jaunt . . . Peter Donald just back from a Bahama vacation . . , Brooklyn postmaster Edward J. Quigley cited WPIX for keeping the public informed on the opera- tions of the postoffice . . . “Plain- clothesman” celebrated its 175th consecutive broadcast on DuMont. Phil Minoff, Cue mag TV critic, has his 9 first dramatic script, “Words Fail Me,” on “Danger” Tuesday (17) . . . “Crackdown” pilot film being lensed for ABC-TV with Baixy Sullivan starred is due for screening in about five weeks. . . . Doug Edwards of CBS-TV opens the Columbia U. Scho- lastic Press Assn, meet tomorrow (Thurs.) . *. Stefan Hatos signed to produce and direct CBS’ “There’s One in Every Family” when it moves to Hollywood . Patti Oneill featured on “Kraft Theatre” tonight (Wed.) . . . Stan- ley Smith named eastern sales manager for ABC-TV . . . Thaine Engle, ex-publicity director of WBAT (& TV), Fort Worth, moved to NBC-TV here as audience pro- motion supervisor. Jack Hoins, ex-Ted Mack scrip- ter and CBS publicist, has joined DuMont publicity staff . . . Thesp Helen Gerald moving into the film field via her dubbing of one of the lead roles in the English-language .version of Italian Films Export release, “Three Girls from Rome.” . . , Attorney Arthur Hershkowitz packaging a 15-minute musical variety show penned by Jack Jfcay- lifejftJn) and starring Janis Paige . . . »ex-N v Y. Times staffer Norman Lorber joined WPIX' publicity office, vice Sheila McKeon, who left after a week . . . N. Y. Dodge Dealers bought the Tuesday and •Thursday segments of Daily News columnist Jimmy Powers' “Power- house of Sports” on WPIX. Hollywood Jimmy Dodd emcees “Harried Housewives,” audience-participa- tion show which teed off on KNBH . . . Robert Bloch, former TV-AM veepee of McCullom & Bloch ad agency, has joined William B. White agency as head of TV-AM, and packages shows, his first video deal being “Lonely Hearts Club,” with ZaSu Pitts and Maxie Rosen- bloom . . , Sam Fuller back from N. Y. . . . Kelly Kar and> Flash TV Stores bankrolling five of KLAC- TV's weekend feature films . , . Lamont Johnson in from biz trek to Gotham . . . KLAC-TV install- ing $50,000 worth of additional en- gineering equipment . . . Cali- fornia Willys sponsoring KTTV’s Saturday film, series, “Mystery Theatre.” . . . KTLA v.p. and gen- eral manager Klaus Landsberg awarded Freedoms Foundation Honor Medal for engineering feat in connection with last year’s A-bomb telecast . . . Bob Berger, salesman for Standard Television, back from trek around country. San Francisco Lucia Chase, here with Ballet Theatre, flies to Gotham to dance on “Omnibus,” March . 22... Sid Crockett returned to teevee voic- ing “Showtime” movie commercials .. .Sammy Davis Jr. will join Jack Benny’s troupe for the Curran Theatre run in April...TV cas- ualty: “Tall Corn Jamboree.” Smooth show, but sponsor felt pay- load was too heavy... Triangle Pub- lications sent reps here to map plans for. local edition of TV Guide Magazine.. .Nancy Andrews dropped from “Stag Party” for a couple of weeks with Eastman Trio substituting... Bill Hunefeld, Jr., ex of KSFO, transferred to KPIX sales... “Fish” Cornfield and Gini Wilbur added to the Del Courtney Saturday show with a Pets Un- limited Feature. Chicago Jack Curry from St. Louie’s KMOX to head WBBM-TV sales promotion . . . Herb Lyons and Dave Brown have set up a joint scripting shop. First assign- ment: TV adaptations of “Curtain Time” riding on WNBQ for the Chi Dodge Dealers . . . Uncle Johnny Coons will celebrate the “Ides” by hosting a benefit for the kiddies at the Washington Boulevard Temple . . . Ken Nordine trekking to Hollywood to narrate a batch of Toni blurbs to be lensed at Cascade Films . . . Aaron Heading bank- rolling the George Raft vidpix on WBKB . . . William Wright heading up the new Kling Studios office in St. Louis . . . Arthur Godfrey will emcee the opening of Gene Bar- rett’s Beau Nash Room at the Am- bassador East March 28 . . . Danny O’Neil revitalizing at Passavant Television Chatter Wilmington, Del. WDEL-TV’s market has more money per capi- ta to spend than all the other 48 states. Buy WDEt-TV, your key to this richest of markets. A Sfeinman Station Roprosenfed by ROBERT MEEKER Associates New York Chicago Los Angeles San Francisco Hospital . . . March 14 will be the second anni for Don Herbert’s Mr. Wizard” on NBC-TV . ♦ . DuMont shedding “Pet Shop” on same date. . . . Royal Lumber Co. picking up the tab on WNBQ’s “Eleventh Hour Theater” for 13 weeks . . . Tavern Pale Beer, pioneer TV user, has returned to the medium after a couple year’s hiatus with Lcs Nichol’s late evening newscast on WGN-TV five times weekly. Series is being produced by Herb Futran for the W. B. .Doner agency . . . Jack Barnett and Mike Kesmar handling . WBBM-TV’s newsreel assignments. Bernard ■ Procktor, topper of Procktor Productions, stopped off on his way to the Coast to' huddle with midwest sales chief A1 Morey ... Marty O’Shaughnessy resigned as editor of “TV Forecast.” No re- placement named as yet. Story Famine SS5 Continued from page 22 the door for many more writers in TV. “Writers recognize the produc- ers’ problems and don’t expect a lot of money in TV, but they want to share his gamble via residuals,” Barron said. “There Is consider- ably more interest in TV as a re- sult of* the SWG pact,” he added. William Morris story ed Reece Halsey agrees the majors could provide the answer to it all, but doesn’t see any imminent entry on their part, aside from Columbia and Paramount, already in via sub- sids. He said money is the chief rea- son for the story shortage, that writers don’t feel there’s enough of the green stuff in it for them. “A writer with a good property will either take it to a motion pic- ture studio, or hold it for future TV use, since he feels its value will increase as time goes on. Also, they figure a TV sale kills- a po- tential movie sale by about 99%. If a story is a good one, a writer won’t sell it for a one-shot, but prefers to work it into a series where he can get residuals. Few producers are offering residuals these days.” Documentaries Continued from page 22 heads up the sales effort on the pic. Firm started out in 1948 as a newsreel outfit, but has slowly changed its product to the point where today it’s working almost exclusively on the documentaries. It still does an occasional “special” for TV or theatrical release, but Kaiser finds the overhead too high for a steady newsreel operation. Kaiser has achieved country- wide coverage on the pix, which m^y be sponsored locally, via a di- rect mail distribution setup. He’s hit every major market and gotten complete coverage in several of the key markets. Unlike other opera- tions also is the fact that stations keep the prints for replays when- ever they wish. Firm has also donated several of its pix to the State Dept. Other free pix come from local Chambers of Commerce or civic- business groups (St. Augustine, Fla., currently has a travelog mak- ing the N. Y. rounds), directly from industrial firms, from the Armed Forces, from social groups (Ameri- can Foundation for the Blind and Brooklyn Industrial Home for the Blind combined with ABC to film a 13-pic series on how the blind live which will be available after the ABC run), and as a rare instance, from a municipal unit (WNYC Film Unit’s pic on city’s anti-pollution campaign). WOR-TV Tests Continued from page 27 with low rating. Another factor was that housewives were asked to send, via mail, a $1 bill plus change, causing need for extra stamps on the letters. Response, according to Wade, so far is an average of 200 replies per announcement. Wade would further extend the field, if the test proves successful, to advertise items in the stores themselves.,, Also a possibility is giving the gadgets away free just to create the market for acces- Inside Stuff-Television Heightened competition among the ciggie companies is Involving cloak-and-dagger aspects. When Liggett & Myers recently purchased a big spot tele campaign (with a big guy on WCBS-TV, N. Y.), the product was announced as Chesterfields. However, a couple of days before the spots started, it was revealed that the product was cork- tipped Fatimas. • Just wanted to keep the opposition guessing. Similarly, when Philip Morris brought out its king-sized brand, the move was ^shrouded in secrecy. Incidentally, PM prexy O. P. Mc- Comas, speaking in Philly last week, included a section on “We Lovo Lucy” and PM’s $8,000,000 contract for the CBS-TV- show. On a dollars'-and-cents basis, he said, it is “twice as efficient as the average nighttime TV show in getting its message to the public.” He added it is “nearly three times more efficient dollarwise in reaching adults than Life or Philadelphia newspapers.” Exec called it “one of the most efficient advertising buys in the entire country” and cited its supplementary merchandising and promotion benefits. NBC was caught in midstream by George Jessel’s fast deal at $100,- 000 a year, for two years, plus two years’ options, with American Broadcasting-United Paramount, Inc. The comedian, who has one' more to go on the “All-Star Revue” series for NBC, found himself stalled by change in NBC personnel, and rather than mistime his future he closed with ABC. This move presumably eliminates NBC as a co-investor in Jessel’s proposed indie picture, “Rip Van Winkle” (Jimmy Durante), which looks set via RKO. Durante meantime has agreed to a spring commitment at Universal. 9 CBS-TV’s “There’s One in Every Family” is proving a sleeper. It’s first Nielsen (for February), when segments wejre sponsored by Eastco and Bymart, brought the cost-per-thousand viewers under the $1 mark. Rating .for Eastco’s five-minute period was 15.5, with the segment costing $1,675 for 17 stations. That broughtt the message into 1,192,000 homes at $1,41 per thousand homes or 83c, per 1,000 viewers. In its five-minute portion Bymart hit a 12.4. With its lineup raising the time-and-talent nick to $2,031, the segment hit 1,526,000 homes at $1.62 per thousand or 95c. per thousand dialers., Cost-per-1,000 figures are among the lowest for any network video. Ralph Edwards’ “This Is Your Life” on NBC-TV tonight (Wed.) will screen the kinescope of its recent Lillian Roth Alcoholics Anonymous telecast “by public request.” While the show had a great audience and response, reason for the rebroadcast is the fact that filmactress Ann Sheridan, skedded for the show tonight, found out about the plan to do her life story. Edwards’ outfit goes to great lengths to keep the featured guest un- aware of the fact. Usually it’s done by telling him<that he’ll introduce someone else; thus, when Dinah Shore’s life was done, the thrush thought she was to introduce Eddie Cantor, who actually introduced her. , What may be video’s briefest remote was aired by WCBS-TV, N. Y.» Monday (9). CBS key picked up Larry LeSueur from the United Na- tions headquarters for a 20-second courtesy announcement at the 3:30 p.m. station break. LeSueur plugged the channel’s coverage of the UN one hour later. TV and TV commercials will be covered in a special session of Assn, of National Advertisers spring meeting at Hot Springs, Va., March 18-20. CBS prexy Frank Station, in an off-the-record spiel, will deal with TV costs and the relative contribution video makes to the advertiser! NBC Prexy Frank White, also speaking off-the-record, will talk on the responsibility of the advertiser and broadcaster in presenting high- level programming. Arthur Bellaire, AM-TV copy chief of BBD&O, covers “How to Cut Costs and Increase Impact of TV Commercials” and George Nelson pitches on “Successful Selling With Radio and TV Jingles.” A $5,000 scholarship program for radio and' television students at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State College was announced by the Jefferson Standard Foundation. The awards are valued at $1,250 each. They will be made annually with a four-year period of tenure, subject to normal academic progress by the recipient. An award for its telecasts of the convention of the American Medical Assn, last June was made to Smith, Kline & French Laboratories of Philadelphia last week by the American Public Relations Assn, in Washington. Smith, Kline & French arranged two telecasts of conven- tion proceedings and a stomach operation from Wesley Memorial Hos- pital in Chicago via NBC-TV for the estimated 70,000 doctors owning TV sets who could not attend the meet. Programs, titled “The March of Medicine,” also brought to doctors the latest advances in varying medical fields. Pharmaceutical firm won a trophy from APRA two years ago for its closed-circuit color TV medical programs, and since the June broad- casts, has sponsored two more vi'deocasts, of the AMA clinical session in Denver in December. *" 1 1 — ‘ HI.. ■ -L-. ■■■ ■ America’s Most Powerful Channel 4 Station ★ Covers virtually all of Utah's population, plus Southern Idaho Eastern Nevada Western Wyoming ★ OVER A BILLION DOLLAR MARKET National Rep Blair TV. !<■<