Variety (December 1953)

I Wednesday, December 23, 1953 Resignation of John K. Herbert, as veepee administrative iiales chieftain at NBC-TV, reportedly effective Jan. 1 / represents the first major “casualty" within the net- work echelon fraternity since the ascendancy of the Pat Weaver-Bob Sarnoff regime. The news, how- ever, that Herbert is due to check out doesn’t come as any particular surprise , to those close to the scene of operation, for it’s not. ex- actly a secret that prexy Weayer and Herbert didn't share the same policy ideologies, Herbert himself had once as- pired to:the NBC presidency and some months back, during the Frank White prexy regime, had served as head of the television network.. with virtually ev ery body else in TV reporting to hiniv When, however, Gen, David Sar- noff himself took over active com- mand of both the radio and. TV. networks after the White exit, Her- bert’s duties were limited to sales. His resignation < he still has a two- year contract which: the network presumably is buying ufy) helps al- leviate a situation within the. sales division, in which at least three major execs have been operating, the others being veepee George Frey *27-year vet of the organiza- tion) and Charles iBud) Barry, for- mer TV programming, chief at tlie web- Frey, it‘s understood, will become^ No. 1 sales veepee. vrr ImprMprio of Amattur TcUnf H of Hi# opinio* tjwt Ihtro'*? plenty of tolont; orpMid and" If You Look, You Will Find It .*..*.* ■ on# of tho many by If no fodturo* In tha forthcoming 48th Anniversary Number ' .. . of .. Variety DERR'S DIXIE' DOODLE CBS! Sports. Boss to Barnstorm To Middle February A handful of key shifts were made at Mutual last week. Julius F. Seebach. web veepee. upped three men. Richard Puff, director of research and sales planning, upped another two, while a. sixth man was added to the station re- lations staff. fiocco Tito, with Mutual since *49 on production staff, has been’ named executive producer. Richard ' Sassenberg, lately traffic official, \ was made production supervisor, j Seebach made both appointments' . effective, immediately. The. veepee > also named Frank Miller, night : program supervisor for two years. ' liaison between the network’s pro- gram. traffic and facilities. j In Puff's department, he singled out Henry Poster, formerly chief of research for Mutual, to head the presentation staff and. simul- taneously. brought in Joseph Stein to replace Poster. The Iasi appointment was made by Charles Godwin, director of station relations; He has inked a deal with Charles King, general manager of WKAL, Rome, N.Y;,- to take the post of station rela- tions contact rep for the web. TR1MEPH0T0G’ BACK ON CBS RADIO SKED Lester Gottlieb. CBS Radio pro- gram chieftain, is restoring "Crime Photographer" to the roster in a reshuffling of the Wednesday night schedule as result of the Chesehrough cancellation of "Dr. Christian." New program lineup goes into effect Jan. 13, with "Crime Photographer" going into the 9 to 9:30 segment and with Staats Costworth back in his longtime role. John. Dietz will again produce and direct. Slotting of "Crime Photograph- er" will give CBS a sustained two- hour block of melodramas, with the. schedule reading: "FBI In Peace & War" at 8; "21st Precinct" (the web’s toprated sustainer). at •8:30; "Crime Photographer” at 9 and "Crime Classics” at 9:30. Washington, Dec. 22. Petition by St. Louis Univ., licensee of radio station W'EW. to bar CBS from the contest for chan- nel 11 in St. Louis, in view of the recent anti-monopoly order limit- ing networks to interests in five stationswas turned down yester- day tMon.) by the FCC. The agency will allow CBS to compete providing it diverts itself, withtn-ff-three-year-period;-of-one of its minority interests in the event of a grant. . The Commission also denied a petition by Broadcast House, Inc., to. make all channels available in St. Louis UHF in order to equal- ize the competition. ABC’S NEW YEAR-END COIN; BUICK 1-SHOTS Some unexpected year-end. coin filtered into the ABC Radio net last week, though most of it was shared by other webs. Buick. which bought several spots on CBS’ Pow- er Plan, was the main donor, buy- ing the Jan. 3 edition of “American : Music Hall" and the Jan. 4 and 6 shows of the “Mike Malloy” pri- vate eye series. ; Web also pacted Assemblies of God to sponsor “Revival Time” on Sundays 10:30 to 11. Deal was i placed by the Walter F. Bennett agency. Buick coin came via Kud- : ner. Web also got an order from Gillette to carry the . razor firm’s ; big Christmas show (NBC-TV on tele) on the radio net. This doesn’t i represent new coin, however, since jit takes the place of the "Friday j Night Fights,” which ABC carries • on radio anyway. But the .pet was , pitching several oneshots at the j Maxon agency to bally the hour- : long Yuletide show. CBS Radio sports ’director John Derr departed this week for a tour ; of the southern circuit where he’ll I keep going until mid-February on ] a combo biz-vacation. He’s tapped himself to produce the . Miami Orange Bowl gridcast On New Year’s Day, this to be preceded by ! experting in which Derr, Red Bar- ber and Bob Neal will participate. ; Next Saturday (26) Derr's sports- ; cast will he quested by Red Socker ! Ted Williams and golf’s Sam Snead! On Jan. 9 he’ll be in Mo- bile for web’s coverage of the Senior Bowl with Barber play-by- playing and Derr coloring it up. Derr; will originate his-' weekend shows from Mobile, with Sabbath 1 stanza to have St. Loo Cards man- 1 ager Eddie Stanky, who lives in the Alabama city. He’ll then shift to the Coast to cover Bing Crosby’s Pebble Beach golf tourney, return- ing to Dixie after that for the Tampa Women’s Open where he’ll have as a guest Ai Lopez, Cleve- land Indian manager, who’s a resi- dent of Tampa. ABC Radio’s new rate plan for morning and evening strips, cur- rently in the hands of the web’s affiliates, should be okayed and available for sponsors by the, first of the year. Plan provides for co- sponsorships of morning and eve- ning quarter-hour strips at half the quarter-hour rate instead of the customary quarter-hour-plus rate. , ( Under the plan, a morning strip (not yet selected) w'ould be sold on a half-sponsorship five-days?a- week basis, instead of the Current tw-o and one-half quarter-hours- per-week buy, with the sponsor carrying show three days one week, two the next. Under this type of sale, sponsor buying into the plan would pay a total weekly rate of 100Ce of the hour rate for the five shows. Also, if only one sponsor is sold, stations can sell the Other half locally. until a. sec- ond bankroller is signed. On the evening side, the 8 to 9 block of four quarter-hour strips will be available under the same type of sale, except that a sponsor must buy four segments per week (strips run Tuesday-thru-Friday). Same principle holds, under which each sponsor pays only one half the quarter-hour rate, instead of one-half plus an extra charge. Barry Gray and; top echelon at VMCA, Gotham indie, have de- cided to upset a longtime success- ful formula and brave , a change wl^eh' they drop the studio audi- ence at the former’s two-hour night time interview-commentary show shortly after the first of the year. Revision occurs when Gray re- turns from a. two-week junket to Europe and Israel, “All My Love," starring Nina Foch on CBS-TV’s "Studio One," was a welcome relief from major production problems for the pro- gram staff, ad agency and public relations personnel after the re- cent "Dry Run” program. "Dry Run", was a submarine epic. The U. S. Navy was asked for motion pictures of the USS Nautilus, atomic submarine now being completed in New London by the General Dynamics Corp. Films were taken expressly for the. telecast, and put through the Washington process of declassification and clearance. Rear Adm. Roscoe H. Hilleokoetter, Commandant 3d Naval District, agreed to introduce the program. The Navy arranged for directors, tech- nicians and actors—plus publicity men and photographers—to board both the USS Spikefish and Gato for technical information and photos. Everything was fine—until Friday morning before the Monday show. The Defense Dept, m Washington decided not to release the Nautilus film. After numerous long distance calls, the decision was dropped in the lap of Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson. Meanwhile, a model of the Nautilus was sought—and found—in the Boston Museum of Science; Over the weekend, NaVy men and CBS finally reached the curator of the museum who said the model could be borrowed, but as far as he was concerned, it needn’t be returned. On Sunday morning, another model was unearthed, but this one was enroute by express to New Orleans. On Sunday afternoon still another model was discovered, in the home of a General Dynamics Corp. official who said he would lend it to "Studio One." A "Studio One" publicity man was dispatched on Monday, ac- companied by another publicity man to help carry it—and they ar- rived at McCann-Erickson, model, intact, to learn that Secretary Wilson had just released the Nautilus film which was rushed to the web for cutting. Trimmed down, the film lasted 25 seconds— on-the-air. ‘Washington, Dec. 22. The FCC revealed yesterday (Mon.) it has given permission to the Air Force Base at Limestone, Me., to use a commercial channel ' for ‘ a low power TV station for ■ entertainment of troops. The arrangements will continue as long as the channel, which is assigned to Presque Isle, is not applied for. The station, which J$ being built with profits of the base post exchange and motion picture theatre, will go oh the air Christmas Eve with special live shows and film, and plans to start regular operations in January, Receivers will be purchased by the troops with their own funds. . The project, which will cost, about $30,000, may be the first of a series of short range TV stationyat isolated bases, of the strategic air command which are inaccessible to reception from commercial TV service. ‘'Television facilities," said Gen. Curtis Lemay, Chief of the SAG, “are being considered as a means of increasing in- centives and making tours of duty, at isolated bases more at- - tractive.” -----— — -- -~-:v —----- Veteran Announcer Andre Baruch - ^ “ hat Some 25*Year Reflec • lions On Hoic To Speak Your Piece a bright bytinoploca la tha- npcomlng 48th Atmiversary-Number of -— Variety - Millie’ Clearance That "station time" bugaboo, which has thrown the networks for many a sponsorship loss in recent months, has cropped up again— this time at CBS-TV. Charles Antell has put in an or- der for a pickup of the "Meet Millie" show in the Saturday eve- ning 7-7:30 period (on condition that the network deliver a respect- able segment of the affiliates), but so far it’s been rough going. Sta- tions covet that 7-7:30 period cross- the-board for local clients and are reluctant to turn the time over to the network. Same situation is go- ing on at NBC, where prospective clients are a dime a dozen for both 7-7:30 and 10:30-11 p.m., "when and if you. can get us the stations.” CAMELS TO SPONSOR ABC SUGAR BOWL GRID ABC got off a sustaing hook to the tune of nearly $100,000 this week by finalizing a deal for R. J. Reynolds-Camels to sponser the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day over the ABC radio and TV net- works, Deal came less than two weeks before the event. Bill Stern is set to handle the TV play-by-play, while Bob Finne- gan will do the radio commentary. Game pits Georgia Tech against West Virginia in the 20th New Orleans contest. Web is currently trying to peddle fore and aft and intermission features. Also on the docket is the annual Mummers’ Pa- rade from. Philadelphia, to which ABC-TV has sewn up the rights but which it won’t put on the air un*. less there’s a sponsor to go with it. For Reynolds, it’s its second New Year’s buy, haying previously picked up the intermission and fore and aft features in NBC-TV’s Rose and Orange Bowl schedule. . The hot labor, dispute on the dockfronts over who’s boss—the. old racket-ridden International Longshoremen's—Assnvr^r—AFfc’s- new ILA—has brought coin to the Gotham broadcast basket. Morris S. Novik. radio director of AFL, mapped out a campaign of radio ! news shows under the labor union’s sponsorship to bring home the vote in yesterday (22) and today’s balloting among dockers to see which organization becomes their official arm. ■' ' The constant bickering between the deposed Joe Ryan’s "gangster uniqn"_an<L the_ new. AFL_ outfit, forced the NLRB to call for the vote. . Nobody Will know until Xmas day or after just how effec- Ti vr-Novirr In addition to f a spot radio cam- paign (TOO placements or better), Novik for the past month ; has had four morning news (also weather and ship . skeds) shows on New York stations and two . weekend shows of the same nature. Two a.m. stanzas on WHOM, were done in Italian and Polish for the large number of longshoremen of .these extractions. The other two were on WABC and WINS—and all of them were aired early enough, to catch the problem-ridden workers before first "shapeup." WLIB got more of the coin w ith a Saturday Polish newscast, and WHOM some with a Sunday pres- entation in Italian; The AFL arm in sponsoring made no attempt on these broadcasts to hit the dock- men over the head with its bene- | fits. Instead Npvik restricted;then! ' to a form of institutional advertis- ing—"Program brought to you by ILA of AFL, etc." The spot; campaign was saved for saturation, for this last Sunday through Tuesday to get the work- ers’ votes. A short documentary on water- front condition was presented via NBC-TV’s "Today" yesterday (22). Free time was also made available to George Meany, national chief of AFL, by Bill Leonard on CBS ra- dio and Kate Smith on NBC-TV. Meany further expressed his views on the waterfront setup via WABC and WOR-TV on Monday (21). ‘3 "Doube or Nothing," production of which last week passed from the hands of the Walt Framer organi- zation, will henceforth be produced by the packaging firm of Master- son, Reddy & Nelson. "Three Johns" were assigned the show by Ward Wheelock agency, which, owns the property and reps the, sponsors, Campbell Soups. TV version is on CBS, radio version on ABC. With Lever Bros, having already served notice on CBS-TV that it is vacating Its Thursday night half- hour slot in order to get its "Lux Video Theatre" off the opposile- "Dragnet" hook, the shifting of the show to a new time and new net- work facilities will also be the oc- casion for Lux expanding to a full hour show. Just where the show will land is still up in the air, since there isn’t a 60-miriute nighttime: span avail- able on either CBS or NBC. ABC' TV is bidding for the property and the lucrative billings, but. Lever, it’s reported, feels more disposed toward an NBC availability. A full hour "Lux Video Thea- tre" has been In the talking stage for a long time, with the move probably cueing the fadeout of the long-running CBS radio version some time early in ’54. But at the moment it all hinges on when and if an hour TV slot suitable to both the client and the network opens up.