Variety (April 1953)

RAM©«TEUE VISION yjuetmrf Wednesday, April 1, 1953 ’52 Banner Year for TV Networks," But Profits Are Lower Ilian Radio; 16 Stations Pass Million Net Mark Washington, March 31. ♦ As was to be expected, in view of the growth of its audience, the tele- vision broadcasting industry had its biggest vear in 1952, with rev- enue up 43% from 1951 and profits (before taxes* 31% greater. It was the second year in which the in- dustry, as a whole, operated in the black. The increase in business roughly paralleled the gain in the number of viewers, as measured by sale oi sets and geographical expansion of network coverage. There were about 6,000.000 sets sold in 1952 which raised the number in use by about one-third. The coaxial cable was also ex- panded to brinfe more areas within the network orbit. As a conse- quence, the percentage gain in the volume of business done by the webs was substantially greater than that by the overall industry. The importance of the networks in TV broadcasting was accentu- ated in 1952, with the webs (includ- ing their owned and operated sta- tions) accounting for »57% Of the total industry volume. Their share in 1951 was 54.4%. Total revenues of the industry, according to preliminary estimates by Se FCC, were $336,300,000. while profits amounted to $54,500r 000. Revenues, as compiled by FCC from financial reports submitted by all networks and stations, are based on sale of time, talent and program material to advertisers. 50% Gain in Network Revenue Network revenue for 1952 to- taled $191,900,000, or a gam Oi almost 50% over the previous year. However, because of proportion- ately greater operating costs in 1952, profits of the webs were only $9,000,000 as compared to $11,0UU,- 000 in 1951. . Despite the big increase m TV volume^ the webs made less money last year from video than from radio, revenues of which dropped. Web profits from AM operations in 1952 totaled $11,200,000 for a gain of about 18%. This was in contrast to 1951 when TV profits of the networks for the first time exceeded those from radio. The explanation was shown in the FCC figures. While AM reve- nues of the nets dropped only $1,900,000 last year (from $99,000,- 000 in 1951), there was a decline of,$3,600,000 in AM operating ex- penses (from $89,500,000 in 1951). Despite the substantial increase (Continued on page 70) O’Neil Dickering WLAW Mass. Buy Tom O’Neil's General Teleradio is dickering jto purchase WLAW, 50 , 000 -watter in Lawrence, Mass., to add to its Yankee network. Nego- tiations are still in the early stages, and being handled by Teleradio’s Boston reps. Teleradio has been after the property on and off for some time. Negotiations couple of years ago fell through after nearly being con- summated. Teleradio owns WNAC in Boston, which is a 5,000-watter. Addition of WLAW would give it top New England coverage. Mutual Broadcasting System, controlled by Teleradio, currently has a Law- rence affiliate, the 250-watt WLLH, but if sale of WLAW goes through, WLLH presumably would switch affiliation to ABC; which currently is repped by WLAW, while the lat- ter would come under the Mutual banner. _ WPTZ’s Esso Show Philadelphia, March 31. Essi Reporter, for years one of v radio's best known news programs, becomes * nightly TV feature on WPTZ, starting April 6. Dick McCaatcbcon, ABC news been signed as stews editor fcy WPTZ and will be seen awsd nightly on WPTZ "Esso" B, Calvin Jones will be and Ernie Uess, former WCAD news editor, jsl&s WPTZ staff as writer and reporter* Scotti Gets ‘Luigi’ Role Hollywood; March 31. Vito Scotti, former stage actor now playing character parts in pic- tures, has been picked * by Harry Ackerman, CBS-TV veepee, for the title ro e in the comedy series, “Life With Luigi," formerly played by J. Carrol Naish. Romo Vincent, nitery comic,, auditioned for the part of Pas- quale. L. B. WOson In Miami TV Race Miami, March 30. Fourth application for permit to telecast on available ^ Channel .10, here was disclosed this week with filing before FCC' by L. B. Wilson, operator of WCKY-AM, Cincinnati. Company has opened offices in Miami Beach and joins AM sta- tions WGBS-(CBS), owned by George B. Storer chain; WKAT- (MBS* and indie WFEC in the bid- ding for the FCC nod. Two other standard frequency channels here are Channel 4, with WTVJ already in operation on that lane. Applicants for Channel 7 in- clude Biscayne Television Corp., the Niles Trammel-Miami Herald Daily News combo; the East Coast Television Corp.; local resident Jack C. Stein and a Davenport, Ohio group. Channel 2 has been reserved for educational purposes with strong controversy raging among civic groups on practicality of County School Board operating the station proposed, or raising private funds via donation for same. Ultra High Frequency channels are two, with only applicants thus far Television Corp. of Greater Miami, a New York group seeking Channel 33 and Suncoast Broad- casting Corp. which operates local indie" WMIE-AM applying for Channel 27. 81.Cides Now on Cable Bridgeport and Sioux City were added to the coaxial cable this week, bringing the total number of interconnected cities to 81 and total number of stations served to 126, A. T. & T. Long Lines Dept, announced. ; Stations are WICC-TV in Bridge- port, which is fed from the New York-Boston route, and KVTV in Sioux City, which taps its feeds from the transcontinental system * at Omaha. Cleve. AM-TVers Score News Beat On Train Wreck How They re Rated & What They Cost American Research Bureau rating figures for March, '53, project NBC-TV into the top 25 lead with 14 entries as against 11 for CBS-TV. As usual, it's “Lucy" and Godfrey in the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, with Groucho Marx’s “You Bet Your Life” moving into third position and ^Milton Berle, usually No. 3 occupant this season, dropping to sixth position. Lineup follows: Dragnet • Texaco Star Theatre Comedy Hour—-Bob Hope. What’s My Line Our Miss Brooks Toast of the Town ABC’S FRISCO CENTER TO COST $1,500,000 San Francisco, March 31. Construction of a new ABC Ra- dioJTV Center will start in down- town San Francisco within 60 days, ABC president Robert Kintner an- nounced last week. Kintner, tour- ing web’s Coast facilities with other top ABC brass, said the center, which will house KGO, KGO-TV and the web’s Western Division, will cost $1,500,000. Center will be housed in ABC’s four-story building, purchased in 1951, Building will undergo altera- tions and reconstruction to make room -for eight studios, control fa- cilities and office space. Lotsa Horse Racing On Tap for ABC Radio ABC radio is supplementing its schedule of 10 key horseraces sponsored by Gillette with another 10 on a sustaining basis that will give it a full Saturday afternoon turf schedule that will start next week and run through August 15. In addition, it has set races from September through November. Series will be built around the Gillette schedule, starting April 4. laying off from April 18 to June 20, while the Gillette series is on, then resuming June 27 and run- ning till Aug. 15. After a three- week layoff, series returns till Nov. 14. Jack McCarthy will handle sportscasting. Series bows with the running of the Excelsior Handicap from Jamaica. Cleveland. March 31. Quick action and long hours without sleep by the WTAM-WNBK news staff in Cleveland enabled NBC. locally and nationally, to get a real beat on the March 27 wreck of three N. Y. Central trains near Conneaut, O. First news of the wreck came to news editor Edward Killeen shortly before 11 p. m. After alerting NBC’s Cleveland-based TV news- reel cameraman Bob Blair, Killeen wrote a bulletin.for Cleveland NBC radio and TV. At the same time, Killeen informed Edward Wallace, director of News and special events for WTAM-WNBK, who called staff- ers Sanford Markey and Neil Flan- agan, both of whom had already}: Worked eight hours Friday. Another call went to Engineer Wilbur Kost at home. He w r as alerted to ready for a flying trip to Conneaut. Markey, in his own car and equipped with “minitape," and Flanagan and Kost in NBC’s mobile unit, raced to the scene for the nation's first on-the-spot reports of the tragedy. Runners for Mar- key and Flanagan were TV WNBK’s staffers Charles Dargan and James Bell. In less than two hours, Cleveland NBC, radio-TV, was at the wreck, more than 70 miles from Cleve- land. Cameraman Blair, first dr- rival, shot several hundred feet of night film. Difficult technical problems stood in the way of getting Blair’s film on NBC Saturday afternoon. Wal- lace, back in Cleveland, called lab personnel to process Blair’s film when he arrived. Again someone was roused from bed. WNBK’s film director Albert O’Deal was also routed from bed to handle the tedious, exacting job of cutting and splicing Blair’s film. This done, a four-minute special telecast was written by news edi- tor Windsor Smith and sent to the full NBC-TV network. On the radio side, Markey with portable minitape, and Bell serv- ing as runner, covered the wreck scene itself, about a mile and a half from paved roads and quarter to a half mile fr'om either of two mud roads made completely im- passable by steady rains. Flanagan, engineer Kost and Dar- gan took recording equipment to j-Brown Memorial Hbspital in Con neaut, closest hospital to the wreck. There, in hallways, emer gency . rooms and wherever there was room, recording of nurses, sur- vivors, Red Cross officials and vol- unteer rescue workers were taped. Between them, Flanagan and Mar- key taped enough on-the-spot mate rial to provide the web with a two minute feed at 8 a. m. Saturday. A similar feed for a locally pro- duced radio news show at the same time and a full half-hour taped ma terial was fed the net in New York via closed circuit. That material was for use on NBC’s “Today" and local radio news in New York. Cavalcade of Sports— Giardello vs. Grahar Red Big Town. Big Story. Erwin, ffasey Hits TV Jackpot With New Low-Cost 3-D Comml Technique Prep Jofttyn Series Two radio audition shows have been cut for a new cross-the-board suspense series created and. pack- aged by Alan Sands and starring Jay Jostyn, ex-“Mr. D.A." Teledition scripts for twice week- ly 15-minute program are being written by Sands and EUie Tarshis. WABC Sets John Conte For Disk-Jock Gab Today’ Hikes Rate The NBC-TV “Today" participa- tion price structure goes up to- day (1). New rates are $50 for 10 seconds, $150 for 20 and 60 seconds (this last as available and subject to pre- emption if adjacent five-minute pe- riod is sold). . The five minute cut-ins remain the same, from once per week at $340 to five-a-week at $1,250. ABC-TV‘Album s Major Properties ABC-TV is virtually set on its schedule and much of the casting for the Sunday night “Album” se 1 ries, which tees off April 12 at 7:30. First presentation will star Paul Douglas in “Justice," pro- gram based on Legal Aid Society files with Lee Grant featured. Jus- tice Learned Hand will appear along with program’s host; Donald Cook. Second in the series will be “Glencannon," with Robert New- ton; Myron McCormick and Mel- ville Cooper in the cast and Sir Cedric Hardwicke directing. Third program will star Brandon de Wilde in “Jamie," scripted by David Swift. Fourth and fifth pro- grams will be two-episode version of “Tale of Two Cities," for which cast isn’t %et. Sixth show will have Cook relating three vignettes, pro- gram to be called “Sketchbook." Number of other shows are vir- tually set, with last four in the series to be chosen from nine properties the web has on hand. One of them is “Courtroom," the Quentin Reynolds biog of Judge Samuel Liebowitz* Plans ’ call for programs to be aired from N. Y. and the Coast, with some of the shows live and others on film. Each program will be created in such a manner as to make it the basis of a projected series, should sponsor interest be aroused. In that line, web has worded, the contract with de Wilde Chicago, March 31. Erwin, Wasey ad agency hit the low-cost television commercial jackpot last Friday (27) on the DuMont telecast of the Golden Gloves intercity fights by produc- ing 33 minutes of commercials for $5,000, using a new technique which the agency has developed for the Admiral Corp. Weeks ago, when only 10 feet of space was available for the live Admiral commercials on the Bish- op Sheen program, the agency started searching for a different method of presenting commercials. Filmed commercials were nixed by the agency as too expensive and inadequate for network programs. Michael Levin, director of creative production for Erwin, Wasey, ex- perimented with scale models of Admiral products and found the cost prohibitive—with the going price of a miniature TV set being $ 1 , 000 . Color Transparencies Levin found his answer in color transparencies. By carefully plan- ning the set for proper perspective, and by later retouching the red end of the spectrum with blueish tints, photog Nicholas Guida was able to deliver color transparen- cies which have much greater three-dimensional effect than is possible to obtain with either live or black and white stills or motion pic film. (In preliminary testing on advertiser, agency personnel and the public, both live shots and transparencies of the same scene were viewed on the monitor; and Levin claims the vote was unani- mously in favor of the transparen- cies for realism.) In using transparencies, such as (Continued on page 68) so that he will be available should set John Conte m a cross-the-board the show be projected into a series, afternoon disk-jockey gab strip. Douglas’ is strictly a one-shot ap- Conte will play records, sing, do pearance, however, a five-minute sports news strip and do occasional interviews from 5:15 to 6 p.m. He’ll move into the Bobby Sher- wood slot. Latter moves into the 6:15-7 period, formerly occupied by one of the staff deejays. Show will be carried participating. It’s to be produced by Jerry Gross and Norman Baer. Conte, incidentally, will use as a theme “You and I," which he sang some years ago as Jack Pearl Auditions Radio Series for NBC Jack Pearl (Baron Munchausen) and Cliff Hall (Sharlie) have cut an audition record of a new pro- gram, “The Baron and the Bee," for NBC Radio. The program will be a contestant spelling bee, with comedy relief by emcee of the Fanny ’ Brice-Frank 1 Pearl and Hall, offered for a sum- Morgan airer for Maxwell House, I mer ride. Camel’s Walk To Hypo ‘Show’Spots It’s now fairly certain that Camel cigarets will call it quits after this season on its sponsorship of the NBC-TV “Show of Shows" for which it has been paying $2,500,- 000 for a weekly half-hour ride on a time-and-talent basis. However, it : looks as though Pru- dential, which has also been spon- soring a half-hour on an alternate week basis, may decide to continue* despite previous reports that the in- surance company was planning to check off the Saturday night Sid Caesar-Imogene Coca series. In the event of the Camel jvalk, the network \vill abandon the full 30-minute sponsorship formula in favor of increasing the program* spot potential (more profitable and more in keeping with the web* original sales concept for the . show).