Variety (April 1953)

90 RADIO-TELEVISION Wednesday? April 29, 1953 CBC Hans $26,756,000 Expansion; • • Toronto, April 28. Kicking off with the Coronation CBOT, Ottawa, comes into the Ca- nadian Broadcasting COrp.’s televi sion network on June 2, with a u previous fortnight’s telecasts on an Irregular basis for test purposes First scheduled program, however for Canada’s capital will include direct telecasts, via mobile Units, with Toronto and Montreal outlets also to get Thenceforth, CBOT, Ot- tawa, will beam Toronto-Montreal programs only, plus films, and later • follow with local facility produc tions. Television and radio expenditure * by the state-operated CBC this year is a’ contemplated $26,750,000, said Davidson Dunton, CBC board chairman, the TV system to be di- rectly extended to Winnipeg, Van- couver and Halifax. With the To- ronto-Montreal-Ottawa setup, this Mil feed the TV needs — on Ca- nadian programming — of some 50% of the Dominion’s population concentrations. With licenses just granted to seven private stations In Ontario, Quebec and the Mari- times, this will see Canadian-origi- nated programs reaching some 70% of the nation’s populace but the re- mainder, mainly in the Prairie provinces, vociferously complain- ing about lack of CBC-TV service when, as taxpayers, they are also footing the bill for the proposed «trans-Canada network. Apart from present set plan of CBC key city TV establishment, there remain ’’tremendous gaps” in western Canada between Winnipeg and Vancouver; and these will be immediately open for license appli- cation from private enterprise in- terests, said Dunton, these current- ly covering the Edmonton and Cal- gary areas. The initial seven CBC- TV key city nucleus across Canada (Continued on page 47) Family Films last week began shooting 26 new half-hour “This Is the Life” film for the Lutheran Church-Missouri "'Synod at a re- ported budget of $550,000. Series has just been set on the DuMont network for Mondays a* 8:30, to replace the “Johns Hopkins Sci- ence Review,” which moved oyer to Wednesdays. . * Religioso pix, revolving about family situations, are distributed by the church group and supported by voluntary contributions to the group. First cycle of the pix were shown On ABC-TV and distributed to individuals throughout the country. Melvin F. Schlake, exec- utive secretary of the Synod’s fele- vision productions committee, who signed the production pact, pre- dicted the series will play on 85 stations next fall.. Shooting of the new pix takes place at KTTV, Los Angeles. SHOUSE CHIEF EXEC ON ALL CROSLEY OPERATION Cincinnati April 28. James D. Shouse has been named chief executive officer of all Cros- ley division operations of Avco Manufacturing Corp., including radio-television and appliance ae- tivities. He is a senior vice presi- dent, director and exec committee member of Avco, and chairman of the Crosley Broadcasting Corp. Shouse succeeds John W) Craig, Who resigned as veepee, chief executive officer and general man^ 'ager of the Crosley division to be- come president and chief exec of Aluminum industries, Inc. Hollywood, April 25. Margaret Buell Wilder has ankled as story editor Of Screen Gems to take a writing assignment for the State Dept, in Munich, Ger- many. Miss Wilder leaves in about 10 days for Munich, to work on pix under direction of George Temple- ton. She joins Virginia Van Upp, also set for such an assignment. Columbia vidpix subsid does not plan to replace L Mtes tWMdtefc 4 ' 1 ;« . Pubservice Limited That public service can sometimes be too much of a good thing was discovered last Friday (24) by WHLI, Hemp- stead, L. I. The station, which Operates a lost and found de- partment for its listeners, had the following calls: a lost cocker spaniel, a wandering/collie, and a flown-the-coop parakeet. Topper, though, came when announcer Dick Jayson asked help in recovering a lost $20 bill. Station gave up when it found that the bill had been swallowed by Jayson’s dog. On Football TV Kansas City/ April 28. National Collegiate Athletic Assn, which this week mailed out copies of its television plan for the fall to member colleges, has some- what relaxed its vigilant stand against unlimited telecasting of tl\e grid contests. New plan calls for televising 13 dates, with two or three of the telecasts consisting qf pickups from a number of games throughout the "country. Plan also allows local telecasts of games of smaller colleges. Plan, which must be ratified by member schools, limits individual schools to one televised game each, and also limits telecasts to a maximum of two for each of the eight NCAA districts. Relaxed portions of the plan include pro- visions for telecasts over and above those scheduled if there is a sold-out gate, plus possibility of other telecasts on days other than Saturdays and Thanksgiving, the already scheduled dates. In either instance, college concerned would have to apply to the NCAA for permission to televise. When member schools ratify the plan, the NCAA television commit- tee will choose a sponsor, who will select the games and pay rights directly to the schools selected. Presumably the sponsor would ser lect the network on which the games would appear. Plan for the “panorama* video- casts in which three or four games across the country would be picked up by the network, is experimen- tal. It’s felt that such an arrange- ment, where it’s impossible for the viewer to see any complete game, would harm the football boxoffice less than pickup of an entire con- test. CBS started the system on radio a few seasons back. PARKS TO EMCEE‘RANK’ IN BERLE EVENING SPOT Bert Parks will be the emcee of the Tuesday evening “Break the Bank,” going in as half the Berle replacement (8:30 to 9 p. m.) on June. 23. ' Five Day deodorant is the sponsor. Earlier half of Berle time is still unset for the sum- mer. Daytime “Break the Bank,” also on NBC-TV, will continue through the hot weather as a co-op strip at 3 p. m„ with Bud Collyer the emcee; Pitt Pitcher So Potent, Him Pittsburgh, April 28. High-powered selling job of Joe Mann for Kingston Watches on a number of compiercials scattered On WDTV’s house shows has re- sulted in a show of his own. It also features Mann’s wife, Elaine Bev- erly, for the same sponsor. Watch people, impressed with what Matin, had done for them, went scouting for any available quarter-hour segment on teevee in this single-channel market, finally came up with 15 minutes at mid- night every other Tuesday, and promptly snatched it up. Program will feature songs by Mann and Miss Beverly, who have done nitery work together, and also used to have their own TVer locally un- der title oft*Mr/drtdMi!^ ‘Racket’ To Replace ‘Lucy’ For Summer Philip Morris Is replacing ”1 Love Lucy” with “Racket Squad” for the summer. Latter show had been on CBS-TV earlier this sea- son, but was taken out of its time, Thursdays at 10 p. m., for “My Lit- tle Margie.” Last “Lucy” show, titled “Ricky’s Life Story,” is June 15. Distrib Outfit Louis D. Snader, most of whose product has been sold or handed over to outside distributors, is back in the distribution business again with a new organization, Snader Releases, Inc. New firm will distribute new Snader produc- tions as well as outside entries. Snader retains little to his pro- ducing company, Snader Tele- scription Corp., but has been en- joined by an arbitration agreement from using the name of his old distrib outfit, Snader Telescrip- tion Sales Corp. Hence the new name. New sales manager for the outfit will be Robert Carroll, onetime N.Y. manager for Ziv. Robert Snader will become vice-president in charge of sales-seryice, While Bernard Brody will head the pro- motion department. Lawrence De Soto will head the procurement department, while Phil Bloom will serve as producers* contact. Har- ris Taylor will be in charge of dis- tribution records. Snader Productions is currently producing “Liberace” for Guild Films. New firm won’t be able to distribute this series. To Local-Station Markets With CBS-TV Going on Own Without a CBS-TV contract for the first time in years, Telenews Productions, Inc., is concentrating its newsfilm service into local-sta- tion markets, and expanding its* feature packages. Telenews had asked CBS-TV for an almost doubling of price for a new contract. The net decided to get into its own operation, begin- ning this week—at a Cost which Telenews estimates at three times its own contract. Currently the company is selling its five-a-week daily service to 58 tele .stations, its weekly tele news- reel to 30 stations, and “This Week in Sports,” with Tommy Henrich as narrator, to 35 stations. Biz is on the upbeat, Telenews reps claim, with daily-service business having gone up 20 stations since the lift of the freeze. Only network con- tract is with ABC. . In addition to pushing its news and sports programs on individual television stations, the firm is busy on other productions such as the new “Look Photoquiz,” with United Television Programs distributing. “Adventures in the News” and “Adventures in Sports” are han died by Sterling Films. Telenews also offers a stock library service of over 6,000,000 feet of film, and shoots documentaries on assign- ment. In the offing is a “Build-a-Show Library’* (like a radio-transcrip- tion series) for tele stations. A Reporter’s Service Martin Agronsky of ABC, accepting his Peabody news award in N .Y, last Friday (24), said, in part: “Two years ago my good friend, Robert Kintner, president of the American Broadcasting Co., was deservedly honored by this same committee for having the courage and good sense to recog- nize the absurdity of various ill-founded allegations that that well- known . figure—Gypsy Rose Lee—had something she wished to conceal. “Mr. Kintner thus pointed a useful lesson—that where there is smqke, there need hot necessarily be a fire, but just a smoke machine, or perhaps a vote machine. » “The irrational fears and emotions that psychiatrists tell us are the usual product of the tensions under which we all live these days, do not make easy the job of those reporters who conceive it their duty to keep looking through the smoke ^to see whether it conies from a fire, or whether it is just spewed out by the smoke machine operators, burning their trash and rubbish. “And if there are those who think this an inconsequential duty, they might usefully remember the one freedom which tfie great Chief Justice . Holmes denied to even the most passionate liber- tarians when he wrote this—‘No one has .the right to yall fire in a crowded theatre.* / “Reporters who try to make people aware of those who would arrogate to themselves this dangerous kind of right—-which Justice Holmes decried—are more often criticized than rewarded. For that reason, I sincerely hope this honor from my fellow fire wardens of the Peabody Board will constitute an encouragement to re- porters everywhere to report what they see exactly as they see it. I can think of no more useful service a reporter can perform.” AM-TV ‘North’ Switch Hollywood, April 28, Leads of a radio show generally move into the tele version, but with “Mr, and Mrs. North” it’s the reverse. Owner-producer John W. Love- ton is dropping Joseph Curtin and Alice Frost from the radio version. Richard Denning and Barbara Britton will double over from the tele show. Rescue on ‘Ethel’ Sunbeam (shavers and kitchen mixers) has bought the NBC-TV “Ethel and Albert” show, begin- ning May 9. It thus pulls the web out of a financial hole left by Pear- son Pharmacal (Ennds) when the latter company decided not to spon sor the program, which premiered 7:30 to 8 p.m. last Saturday (25), Sunbeam outfit will back the show for- five weeks, and then definitely return in the fall after an eight-week summer hiatus. Although the new “Ethel and Al- bert” sponsor softens the financial blow, NBC lawyers are still con sidering action against Ennds for its bowout from that show and al- ternate-week sponsorship of the Monday-night “Eye Witness”, pro gram, which left the latter a total sustaiher. Continued from page. 20 by Martin Agronsky, ABC radio news commentator winner, who read a hard-hitting speech, and Wally Cox (whose “Mr. Peepers” on NBC-TV shared the entertain- ment award with the same net’s “Your Hit Parade”), saying that the solemnity of the occasion will not stop the program from “fool- ing around/’ Other winners: Television Education — “The Johns-Hopkins Science Review” (WAAM, Baltimore—DuMont). Television Special Award—“Vic- tory at Sea” (NBC). Regional Public Service, includ- ing Promotion of International Un- derstanding—WIS (NBC), Colum- bia, S. C. Local Public Service—Tele sta- tion WEWS (ABC, CBS), Cleve- land. ABC-TV INKS JOEL GRAY FOR WEEKLYTV SHOW Long pending negotiations be- tween ABC-TV and Joel Gray were consummated this week when the network signed the young comedian to an exclusive longterm pact. Gray will aplfear in a weekly half-hour tele show next season, exact format of which is yet to be determined. Gray, son of comedian-composer Mickey Katz, had made , several ap- pearances on NBC-TV’s “Colgate Comedy Hour” and recently made his New York nitery bow at the Copacabana. Negotiations were handled for ABC by talent- program veepfee Robert M. Weit- man. New Indie Preps Pair Of Vidfilm Series Hollywood, April 28. Workshop Productions, Inc., new telefilm outfit, has gone into pro- duction with two series of six-min- ute shorts which will be released through George Bagnall & Asso- ciates. .They’ll be sold either as singles or in packages consuming 15 or 30 minutes of time, with the gap between subjects bridged by narration, Ernest Baumeister is prexy of the new firm and Paul Garrison veepee and exec producer. Garri- son will write, produce and direct all the firm’s offerings. Series now underway are “Variety The- atre,” which consists of 156 sub- jects, and “Our United States,” of 52 subjects. Other officers of the Workshop firm are Lee Perkal, secretary and counsel; Edwin Gillette, treasurer, and Lester M. Cook, Jr., general ^manager*' 1 .1 J M (. Hollywood, April 28. In a deal involving approximate- ly $1,250,000 and. a 30% uppance in budget, Ford Motor Co. is re- newing its “Ford Theatre” telepix series with Screen Gems for 39 weeks. Paulette Goddard has. already been set by the Columbia TV* sub- sid to topline the first telepic in the new series, “The Doctor’s Down- fall,” rolling June 25/ New deal ups figure of about $30,000' per pic allocated ip> initial deal with Ford.' Irving Briskin is production exec and Irving Starr and Jules Bricken producers of the series seen on NBC-TV. s ABC TO PITCH MPAA ‘H’WOOD’ CLIP SERIES Motion Picture Assn, of America board is expected to approve final format of its institutional TV show, “Hollywood Parade,” at its May 1 meeting in N. Y. Eastern adver- tising-publicity heads of the com- panies already have given their okay. Board action will flash the green- light to American Broadcasting Co., to start lensing the pilot film for series in which MPAA prexy Eric Johnston will handle the m.c. chores. ABC is anxious to start pitching series to prospective bank- rollers as early As possible. Terms and outline for the show are being submitted to MPAA in a formal letter from ABC. Indi- vidual half-hour stanzas will offer clips from top pix as Well as name personality interviews. Films are expected to cost about $10,000 each with all of the distribs’ prod- uct repped. ‘Conscience* Continued from page 27 and, most importantly, to the growth of audience. “But what we must avoid at all costs,” he warns, “Is being stampeded into concessions be- cause of the pressure from organ- ized interests. Let’s not make the mistake we made in radio; let’s see to it that the rates bear some rea- sonable relationship to the cost of doing business, and not suddenly find ourselves in the red and won- dering why.” « On the question, of educational television stations, Fellows ob- serves: “Time will prove that edu- cation will gain most through co- operative effort with existing com- mercial broadcasting facilities. We believe as well that the viewing public will gain most through this collaborative process.* 'Real George' Vidpix Sacramento, April 28, Articles of incorporation were filed this week for Real George Corp., which will produce series of half-hour situation comedy vidpix itled “Real George.”. Organizers Of the company are George O’Hanlon, -H. H. Guild* ^Gerdoir Levoy* and Richard Hare,