Variety (July 1953)

26 -TELEVISION Wednesday, July 8, 1953 Military Use Washington, July 7. ■ 4 . Army Signal Corps" is working with; TV in f o u r b r o a d fields 1 through' a “Mobile Television System” now on a tour of installations Experimenting with potentials of military vise of the . medium. A fad sheet issued by the Corps last week says TV. may be used advantageously .■•■'■by:, t he ^ Army “as a l actlea 1 ad j unet iirTnlell igenoe and reconnaissance work, surveillance, fi re' control, data transmission, ’briefing of tactical commanders, guidance of pilotless vehicles, ; and in the close-up observation of the action and .effect'; Of. weapons”. Other military uses for TV are In the fields of training, education, and “as a technical tool to .be used primarily for viewing objects with; which direct contact would be highly dangerous such as contaminated o<; radio active substances”. So far; the , Corps declares, TV as tactical adjunct is -still ;in a devciopment stage and, , its use in actual combat is “difficult to forecas|”. llut use of the medium for I raining has been successful, making it possible to televise lectures and demonstrations to large, numbers of troops at widely separated places ; ■ . • The Army’s mobile unit com si.sts of three field cameras, an Iconoscope field chain and an airborn camera with associated siound' originating from microphone, tape, disks, or film. Material and equfp. mCnt are carried in a transmitter van, transmitter power van* receiver van, receiver power van* TV . recording bus, and L-20 airplane counting camera and transmitter. NBC Radio last week ..revised its Tandem Plan for the fail; with the new Jimmy Stewart airer, “The Six Shooter,” to be included in the three-program lineup. Day and time for the program isn’t set yet, but it's definitely to be included In the three-program, three-spon«or lineup,. “Barry Craig,” included in this year’s^ tan(lem, moves over from Sunday nights at 10 to Tuesdays at 9:30. Red Skelton airer had the Tuesday night exposure previously in the plan. Eddie Cantor show falls under the Tandem domain jn the fall, with Judy Ga nova revert-, ihg to straight sales. No time shift is involved in the Cantor .airer, remaining in the 9; 30 slot. While time on the Stewart show hasn’t been set* it’s conceivable it will move into the 10 p.m. Sunday slot being vacated by “Craig." Web is peddling plan fo sponsors. It had Emerson Drug and K nomark in on the plan this year, but there's no indication they’li return... Ed & Pegeen to Preeni ‘Pays to AdverTVize’ -Tiie .Fitzgeralds start a new video show over WABC, New York, this Sunday < 1 ? ) night at 9:30, aimed at advertising the department store advertisers. It will be called "It Pa>s to AdverTVize;” primed at Miotlighf the Sunday, merchandising ads. ABC prez Bob Kintner thinks that this is a new departure in the utilization of the video’medium for retail merchants; Before both Ed and. pegeen Fitzgcrakl pioneered the All*. & Mrs. fornyat— tliey’re novv . in their. 1 l.lh year over ABC— hot li were, in the department store .business in Portland, Ore,, San Francisco. Kansas City and New. York:. Mrs; Fitzgerald was ad and merchandising v.eepee With stores like liale Bros., Frisco, and MeCreny’s, .Jjj: . Y. : T hey ’re regi s t e r i n g “ A d verT Vi ze ” as a registered trademark Bob : Blake, director bf publicity for WCBS, the CBS key in New York; win move over to NBC July 20 as coordinator of publicity for the NBC awned-and-opgrated radio and television stations, Post is a new one, reflecting the increasing importance. of the o-and-o’s In the . NBC scheme... of things, and Blake, wilt report directly to. yip. Ted Colt. . No replacement has been, set for Blake at WCBS, and none probably will . be forthcoming, until next week, when George Crandall, CBS director of press for radio, returns from vacation. Blake has been in the WCBS spot for over, a year, having moved over as press. chief of WOn and WOR-T.V, N; Y., when the stations merged with /Mutual. JessePs Sdn. Nile Video George Jessel is tentatively set for a Sunday night 15-minute show biz gossip and guestar session on ABC-TV, with the Status of his projected half-hour variety segment still in doubt. .Sunday night show will* be sponsored on alternate weeks by BB Rol-Rite Pens, With net . looking for an alternate sponsor. Program, will air at 9:30, giving the net a lineup consisting of Walter Winchell at 9; for Benrusi “Orchid Award” at 9:15 for Viceroy, followed by Jessel, . BB Pen, however, wants in on the Jessel banquet tablevariety session, and network is likewise looking for a co-sponsor for that. Should web pact a co-sponsor lor BB’s 15 minutes, the pen outfit would forego the Sunday night stanza, which presumably would be dropped. Waterloo, ' lnd.— Tri-State Television, an Ohio corporation, expects to begin regular video service over WIN-T, Waterloo, on Oct. 1, Station will be on Channel 15 with power of 20 kilowatts arid a 500-foot antenna, broadcasting daily from 5 p.m, to midnight. $100,000,000 Pix Stake In TV Continued from page 1 their shows-in-the-can from station to station for a total of seven hours and 30 minutes. In a typical week novv, 40 hours of station time aredevoted to national spot. film. Large as it is, that national spot film figure; still doesn’t suggest the mushrooming scope of the business cqiried. Robert H. Salk, head Of the Katz Agency’s new Station Films, Inc., determined that “nat tonal spot fi fm” meant a package that was sponsored by one advertiser on at least five TV stations. Thus, although Pacific Coast Borax, for exam ple, sponsors “Death Valley Days” in 6(f markets, that’s .only considered one-half hour national filrri spot for the week examined. Similarly, shows like “Hollywood Offbeat” are bankrolled in a vast number of markets, but because no one bankrpller picks up the tab for it in at least five markets, that Series is. not tabulated. The network tabulation, too, is restricted to strictly syndicated vidfilm series. It doesn’t take in the some $20,000, 0()0 invested in commercials, the some $10,000,000 in newsreels and sports films, the Ve rq Massey to W D S U T V New Orleans, July 7. JVera _Massev. vet New. York radio and television ' ■personality,' has j oi ned . t he staff, of ; W DSU-TV Live Vs. Film— Network & Spot: ’52 LIVE FUM LIVE FILM live FILM Her first assignment will be a <?.aily one-hour show, “Our House.” . FILM FILM T^rom June, 1952 tb Jiine, TD53, tIi e a moirnt M tel epiX Ofl The iiet work^f 1ncreasrd by o\"er 20fi^ ami national spot film by almost 600%. Charts above show how live vs. film programming comnares one week jn. each year. Total live programming for all Webs for (he 1953 >Veek was T50 hours! lOnimutcsand thefilm time Was 34 hours, five minutes. The national spot film time of 40 hours was arrived at by counting only film shows sponsored on at least five outlets by one bankroller $40,000,000 in shorts; serials and feature pictures, plus those live shows on the order of “Treasury Men In Action” which are partially on film. Variety’s study disclosed that three of the webs, lead by ABC TV, had increased their telepix programming phenomenally. The one exception was DuMont, whose programming in telepix has decreased to zero. Here’s how the webs stacked up: Out of a total 28 hours, 45 minu tes of weekly program ; tiixi et ABC-TV has 15 hours live, 13 hours, 45 minutes on ifilrn, Of a total Weekly 68 hours, NBCTV has. 55 hours, 40 minutes live; 12 hours, 20 minutes on film. Of a total weekly 60 hours, CBS has 52 hours live, eight hours on film. . ■ ... •; ■ * .■ Of 27^ hours at DuMont, none was on film. . The most significant conclusion that can be drawn from the study is that advertisers are now using more spot than network telepix— almost six hours more per week. That’s so, of course, because of the greater flexibility of spot, for a regional advertiser, plus the inr creasing tendency of blue-chip advertisers to seek residual rights from the Subsequent-runs of their properties. Just a handful of the bankrollers producing and then leasing out their vidfil ms later for national spot are P&G. with its “Fireside Theatre” and ■•The Visitor”? Lever Bros. With its “Big Town”; R, J. Reynolds with “Foli low That Mam,” and Baliantine with “Foreign Intrigue/' Already, tradesters foresee the time when at least 75% of network programming will be on film, just as the majority of radio skein shows today are straight out of the can. Highly competitive late evening television situation in New York Will slow down to a walk this summer^ with two of. Gotham’s seven stations signing oft after the hews* at 11:15. WABC-TV, ABC-TV V Gotham key, is cancelling its “Talk of the Town” effective July 10, while DuMont’S flagship, W A BD, is dropping deejay Bill Sil bert July 17. ■ . ... ' Axing bf ‘‘Talk’was the first, official act of John Mitc.hell, who assumed his new post last weCk as v.p. ih charge of the now autonomous WABC-TV in New York, having cleared up his affairs as head of the WBKB, Chicago operation. Station had originally intended to keep the revised format, starring Henny Youngman and Alan Dale, on a sustaining basis after Knickerbocker Beer bows out; July 25, but .Mitchell nixed the project. Dropping of the Silbert stanza had been expected since the exit from DuMont of Dick Jones a month ago as g.rn. of WABD and manager of the three DuMont o-and-o’s. ; Jones brought Silbert in. with him from Detroit when he joined the DuMbnt operation. Silbert continues with his WMGM radio disk show, while Nancy Reed, program’s vocalist, recently got an assignment on WOR-TV’s “TV Dinner Date.” „ Late night lineup now has WNBT scheduled as the . only live programming entry, with Knickerbocker moving over for three-night sponsorship of the Steve Allen show, which starts in .late; July. Remaining four stations will go it with .film, WOR-TV having dropped, d? “Inside Times Square” in favor of film a couple of weeks ago, . More DuM Appointments , DuMont last .week followed up its personnel realignment in program. mi ng with three new appointments. Jay Merkle moves up to post of production ; facilities manager, ref. placing A. L. Hollander, . who became program operations chief. John Seidler becomes assistant production facilities . manager, and Louis Arnold becomes assistant business manager of the program departm^ntr Shifts were caused by transfer of assistant programming director Leslie G. ' Arri.es, 1 Jr., to Washington as manager of WTTG.