Variety (December 1953)

28 RADIO-TELEVISION Wednesday, December 23, 1953 -TNatiomrl _ spot business'-iir radio 4 has riseij 8% in the past year and television spot business has goae up 30% over 1952. John Blair, head of the John Blair station rep companies and president of the Station Representatives Assn,, told the annual meeting of the SRA last week. Blair was reelected president of the SRA, the first time in the group’s sevemyear history a president has been reelected. ].. .Other officers elected were Rob' ert Meeker, v.p.; Joseph J. Weed; treasurer, and Adam J. Young Jr., . secretary. Directors elected were Lewis H. Avery, Russell Woodward (Free 8? Peters) and Joseph Tim* li n ( Branham). George Brett of the Katz Agency, continues as a board member. Meeting also raised the budget for SRA 40% over last year's total. Blair said the increase in na- tional spot, radio business will ^J^pg: i J;plaJ_ti.mei.-Sflles..in_.national; spot to an estimated $135,000,000. He attributed the rise to good ad- vertiser results via spot and to the fact that despite television’s growth, 109 new stations went on the air in 1953. This was the 18th straight year that national spot business increased oyer the year before* -and Blair said it showed no signs of. letting up for 1954; In television, he said, time; sales in 1954 Would , exceed the 30% in- crease registered this year, with _some_ll)0 new stations -expected to be launched in 1954. ‘Who, Me?' CBS board chairman Bill Paley and NBC’s Bobby Sar* noff are extraordinary' look* alikes, and this was accented anew at the Waldorf-Astoria (N. Y.) dinner last- week to RCA prexy Frank M. Folsom. An ad exec with a short mem- ory came up to Paley and wanted to: know, “How does it feel being an executive vice- fpiejudent?”]'lihe~title Robert W. Sarnoff just inherited with Sylvester L. »(Pat) Weaver’s uppage to the NBC presi- dency. Sarnoff, who was hosting the Paley table while Weaver was dittoing CBS prexy Frank Stanton’s table, said, “I’ll try and answer that,’’ ColorsetService Continued from page 1 sponsors that • can go “for this kind of budget are around. ' However, it’s pointed out that the names bought for tjie Yule pro- gram would not ordinarily be avail- able for guest shots. However, be- cause of the special nature of the show and because of the fact that all agencies are op the prowl for names for the rnultitldinous holi- day showings, good talent had to be bought at higher than ordinary rates.-' Gillette show will be the most expensive of the special holiday shindigs. ‘Duffy’ in Color ; Contjpned from page 23. ; Philadelphia — “Superman 3jVCA"U=TV) "3K9';—"Crscd~~KuT“ CAU-TV) 31.4; “I Led Three Lives” (WCAU-TV) 24.8; “Craig Kennedy’? (WCAU-TV) 23,4; “Kit Carson” (WPTZ) 20.3; “Wild Bill Hickok” (WPTZ) 18.8. "Ramar of the Jungle" (WFlL-TV) on eight times a week With highest rating 18.3 against “Omnibus” (WCAU- TV) 9. . Phoenlx^-"Range Rider” (KPHO- TV) 38.2. bucking "Fireside The- atre” 126 1) on KTYL-TVl "Amos -’if’ Andy” fKOOX^KOY-TV) 37.6; "Chevron Theatre” (KPHOTV) 32.1; "I ted Three Lives” <KTYL- troduce • color-originating equip' ment, Madden said MPTY was .tint- ing up both to be in there first and to get more residual’ Values out of pix. He said that with some 65 stations pledged to purchase .net- work color pickup equipment,, it’s extremely likely that those very same stations will find public de- mand causing them to; install 'seal’ origination equipment. Latter, whtle-far-moi’erexpensive-thannet-' work loop equipment, is still only a fraction of the cost required to equip for local live color origina- tions. — Gleason Show” 127.9) on KPHO- TV; Liberace "City Detectiv San Francisco — "Cisco Kid” ‘KRON-TV) 25.5; "Range Rider” • KPIX) 24.0; "Badge 714” (KPIX) Continued from page 23 300 G TV Cridfest If TV,is pricing Itself out of business, it can’t be proved by the $300,000 in time alone that sponsors are shelling out to give them a blurb Interest in the Bowl grid games on NBC-TV. Riding from 12:15 to 7:30 p.m. on the New Year’s Day classics will be a quartet of underwriters, with a new name in television, F. W. Wool worth, the ftve-and-djme emporium, taking on the Tournament of Roses parade. in Pasadena (this one’s in color too). Cotton Bowl out of Dallas Will find Texaco paying the freight, followed by a sports vidpix with Camel Cig- arets behind the gun. The Rose Bowl game prop- er, starting at 4:45, is a Gil- lette undertaking. Continued from page 24 ing. Madden said the firm had set up a policy of not revealing name^! of sponsors, stations, agencies or j even the number of; markets in - —- — r- —. , which a series is sold. Latter is a r. d.n.T.'T lOTBI X'-DUrt ' ' ' j • 1 v;! Introduced was the subsidiary’s "definitive” book, "Practical Color j 23.5; "Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Pre- Television for the Service Indus- S ents” iKRON-TV) 22.5; "Mvstery try. a ?8-page four-crilor/ hand- f Theatre’’ (KRON-TV) 20.5; "Dan- somely illustrated job completej gerous Assignment” (KPIX) 20.5: > witq, endpaper charts that at $2 could be making a bid as a trade arid servicemen’s "bestseller.” Corn- ally every syndicator climbing on » (KPHO-TV) 28.5; i the "look how many market’s we’re >’e” iKPHO-TV) 26.7. | in” bandwagon. That it’s to be an allout effort, however, goes without saying. Firm has set. up a deal with King Features for a premium campaign on "Flash Gordon],” with some 26 licensees, who’ve worked with King , . - v . agreeing to provide "Flash” spoils All Pulse ratings.) | sors with self-liquidating . mer- _ Sf. Louis — "Favorite Story,”.Lchandise for their exploitation 50.5; "Victory at Sea,” 45.5; “City "campaigns. Firm has been pushing pany is backing the: manual "with neSefive ” 41 i: nt th* rirm^nas oeen pusning two-day clinics to be held in some | 4 .Jj*V. * ‘«>depap,r ad campaign that s 65 kev eiri^cs starting in s-Ahritorv 1 ' Ve ^ 40 °. Jenicy Jones. 38.5, , been virtually unmatched for sat- witS -deaiel-s a^? "frviccmeS i**•' AU KSD-TV. j uration in the vidpix field, and is vited to take part. Along with this will be a home-study course in col- orvision launched by RCA Insti- tutes. On the matter of test equipment, * should this ^ be scarce during the ! early stages of. tint casting, com- ! All Pulse ratings.) Gillette Coin’ Continued from pate 1 j tying in with various organizations 1 for exploitation support of the va- rious series. 1 But the key question, as far as : the trade is concerned, is whether ; MPTV will be able to sell strongly 1 enough to recover a $5,000,000 pany will make its services'^ avail- t0 P ; sums for what has been lined production hut when it’s got no able to local trouble shooters at a ! up. Tyrone Power is getting $20 t - j of her product already written off "nominal charge.” RCA has also 000; Victor Borge is getting $9,000; ! to 4 J?f lp along - Even . those vidpix issued invites to its teleset manu- > cosemary Clooney is eettinfi $6 000 ■ diffi- faeturing licensees to attend four-r“™I y J , ! y ‘ g f g *’“;! cu Hy selling new product have ■jp2v color service clinics coming * Edoie Fisner nds been bought cstzilo^s of older product which up in New York <Jari. 11 v; Chicago : for $7,500. The Boston Pops Or- ' has already paid for itself to rely (Jari. 25> and Los Angeles 'Feb. 8>.] chestra under Arthur . Fiedler is - or Course bn home study for techni-] also set. Rosalind Russell was also Wlt " . ,n - ia - 5P. 0 0°.9 0 0' v o i 'th of cians has^ been, made available by! set at $10,000 with show paying ( nevv P 1J? - George F. Maedel, prexy of RCA j for the surrounding chorus that! # ~ 7~~ ^ ^ ^ InstiLUtes. the "training school” j will work with her. Rp|A|H c Npw NRC-TV rBPt arm of the parent company. This j The other agencies aren't happy d new iil#v ** I oidl will, tackle intro to colorvision. ■, about this state of affairs. It’s I Hollywood, Dec. 22. principles of light and tint, re- ceivers. color kinnies, receiver cir- pOinted out that prices of what’s ! Ed Beloin, who joined NBC-TV Jjecn bought are inflated. Most of here a year ago as a producer-di- cuits, setup and adjustment, align- the talent, on guest shots are : rector, has had his pact renewed ir.ent and servicing, special test i bought at prices far below that for another year. He’s currently equipment; etc. ; which MCA is shelling out. Sev- | wrapping up a new variety format About eight officials of RCA sub-i eral-more situations like that, it’s for comic George Gobels, and is sids made short talks, followed by | feared and inflationary salaries of,j working on formats for Phil Silvers a complete "servicing” of an RCA j top names will start another up-! and Alan Young, colorset, which started by placing 1 ward spiral. The other datediggers ! His first assignment after joining the cabinet on its face and assem- 1 are also moaning that refusal of the web was to try to salvage the bling the tri-color tube, et al., from ! $30,000 arid $40,000 fees means then failing "My Hero?’ film series, two open sides. This method indi- j that other stars in the top category r After that folded, lie moved into cates that doors of colorsets will i will be wanting more than that to | the program envelopment end of be made to conform to the service ! make a tele guest, shot. Only a few ' the web’s Coast setup, factor. Also shown >v^s the com-1 ’ • ■ - • • - . • • - * . , • pariy’s Dynamic Demonstrator. their animated work, while the ani- mators, on the other hand, have in- stalled live-action units so they can -produee-- i a-compl<)te~eoriimercialr'-" Living Story Board A final factor in the trend to animation is newly-developed meth- ods of agency-client control of the blurbs at the pre-production stage. All animation producers have their own variations of the control meth- od, but Stahl uses his. own creation, which he calls the “living story board.” It?s actually a rough pre- production print of the commer- cial, drawn and filmed according to agency-client. specifications and costing about 10% (Stahl charges about $125) pf the cost of the fin- ished commercial. Animator works from the story board arid script provided by the agency, drawing rough sketches and filming them in sequence to provide a crude animated effect that’s a simplification of the fin- ished product.. This is .filmed in sync with the script, and the. agency and client can then decide what changes to make before the blurb actually goes into production. It’s a sample of the finished product, something the agency qari’t get in live-action production, and that control element is swinging agen- cies over to animation too. An- other use of the "living story bpard” is found by out-of-town, agencies, which normally would be able to exercise far less control over the finished product than they can with the new method. Growth of the animation field in TV has at least doubled in the past two years, Stahl estimates, arid points to the fact that UPA, in the short term of a year (it entered the TV production field about a year ago) has risen to become one of . the "Big Three” in animated production. The other two are Temple and Transfiim. Animated Productions, Stahl*s firm, ranks in the second-sized group with three others. Television^ needs, Stahl says, are largely responsible for the new cost-cutting innovations. Adoption of "stylized animation” has come about not only from public accept- ance pf the angular figures and their jerky movements (as op- posed _to the pre-war round and rubbery characters with, smooth and exaggerated movements) but from the needs of video advertising to find new methods of cost-cut- tirig, especially with time costs con- stantly rising. He predicts the trend toward greater use of anima- tion Will continue for some time to come. Everybody Talks About The Weather, But RDGA Does.Sonu the Retail Dry (Goods A$$n. ap- parently Is very touchy these days on how the radio-Ty pewsmen touch on the weather, and is par- ticularly sensitive to “over-drama- tization” of the; weather reports, tetter sent,out,by the association last week to the various AM-TV stations in New York chided the newsmen for “overstatement” on the grounds that department store sales are influenced one way or the other by the forecasts. Following is the tekt of a letter sent, to the statiofls .by John C... . Messner, secretary of the RDGA; “A number of radio and TV news commentators last 4 Sunday night and Monday morning so drama- tized the .weather reports as to have; in our opinion, an even more adverse affect on department store sales than the bad weather would have had. “We fully appreciate that broad- casters render a public service in providing listeners and viewers nnth‘-news“about^he-^athW."~We" >; ‘ feel however that accurate report- ing Is as much a part of the broad- caster’s responsibility here, as in other news, Oyerstatehnient arid o. er-dramatization, In our . judg- ment, frequently add Up to inac- curacy with unfortunate conse- quences to many. “None of us can do anything about the weather, but we are sure you would want your ] reporting of it to be free of distortion.” .. Colorcast Skeds Continued fronv page . 27 Continued from page 22 AVNBT-WCBS rating barrier, some- thing they haven’t achieved yet. Despite the fringe time, WNBT’s •‘Douglas Fairbanks Presents” shows a strong 19,0 on Wednesday nights, heating out the CBS net- work Pabst fights, 17.2. WNBT’s "Foreign Intrgue” on Thursdays ©utrates . CBS’ “Plare’ the Face,” 18.9 to 12.9. “Ilopalong Cassidy" (half-hour) with a 14.0 outpoints CBS’ <network) Red Barber Satur- day sports session’s 7.7. "Captain Midnight,” on WABC-TV Sundays, falls just short of CBS’ "Omni- bus’” 12.4 with an 11.7. Other toprated vidpix are "Kit Carson” (WNBT), 11.0; "Abbott & Costello’’ (WNBT), 10.9, and "Superman” (WNBT), 10.9. (All Pulse ratings.) After weeks of struggling .with its Conscience in terms of getting into the "proper mood” for Christmastime programming, CBS Radio came lip with the hard decision to slot a "tough” stanza during a period when "sweetness and light” are on a kilocycle rampage. As a result of thatweighty decision, "Dead Stop” will be given tonight (Wed.), only 24 hours removed from Xmas Eve, as the eighth in the web’s challenging Series of Feature Projects formulated by the Public Affairs Dept, under Stuart Novins. That it took a lot of guts to undertake such scheduling—re- garded as completely out of tune with most all other program fare amid the hollyberry season—is further accented in the fact that “Dead Stop” aims to pull no punches, within the context of good taste,, to dramatize America’s traffic mortality by citing case his- tories, among other facets] . The narrative portions will also represent a reversal of SOP in that these will be done by Walter ( Red) Barber the net’s sports consultant. But there’s a 1 personal reason for the sportcaster’s unique role. His mother-iri-law was in an auto accident three years ago and died several weeks later after intense suffering. It's Public Affairs’ conterition that if "Dead Stop” saves a single life or gives caution to a single‘driver, it will have been Worthwhile from any point of view. pating three-a-week late .afterrioon- ers by end of March, start of ro- tating, specials arid commercial stanzas (one or two a week) by April, Hollywood rotating origina- tioners in third quarter,] and for the final three months, a stepping up in programming conditioned by number of sets , in use and adver- tiser interest.. Net said it would “keep a step ahead” so as to help broaden audience and sponsor in- terest. NBC’s Signal, CBS’ Show With FCC?s approval coming about 5 p.m. last Thursday (17), NBC put a color signal on the air at 5:32, but the "full show” palm went to CBS, which at 6:15 color- cast a quarter corisisting of web prexy Frank Stanton, emcee Mike Wallace, pug-turrted-actor Rocky Graziano. and a few acts. NBC made with a show at 6:30 "star- ring” RCA board chairman David Sarnoff and net prexy Sylvester L. (Pat) Weaver Jr/ NBC’s signal consisted of its call letters; in tri-tone redrgreen- blue oblongcd vertically. It’s also using a repro of this on its mail- irig matter, colorkits, etc. NBC af- filiates announced as geared for tint now are; Philly, Wilmirtglon, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, Toledo, Chi, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, Frisco, L. A., St, Loo, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Cincy, Detroit, New Haven, Wilkes- Barre and Johnstown, Pa. MILLER BREWS UP AN ABC Bill Hamilton, ABC-Radio pro duction manager, has been named eastern program manager of the web, replacing Buzz Blair, who’s moving over to the TV side as as- sociate producer on the web’s Sun- day night mystery series, "The; Mask.” Hamilton wiU eontinue his production duties, but will also handle creative programming and act as . liaison with Chicago and Coast program departments. He’ll report to Ray Diaz, national pro- gram director.. Web will also bring in a new man to head a program sales de- partment, something which the net- work doesn't have now. Office'will coordinate program development with sales needs. Web’s choice for the post hasn’t been made yet, | this area. DuMont is closing out its season of extensive football coverage next week with two major games, the National Football League cham- pionship between the Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Brqwns on Dec. 27 and—the annual East- West Shrine classic on Jan. 2. Last year the pro championship game was carried on only 63 sta- tions, but Miller Brewing Co. will sponsor this year’s pneouriter, .ema- nating from Briggs Stadium De- troit, on 140 stations. Previously this game was scheduled for the first Sunday fdUovying the regular season’s close of play. However, NFL officials, in a bid to take ad- vantage of the increased attend- ance that is sure to come from the Yule crowd held off until the “off” weekend between Xmas and the New Year. For this reason, perhaps more than any other, Du- Mont was able to sell the telecast on this substantially increased hookup, So far the DuMont web has cleared 43 TV outlets in an 18- state area for the Shrine game for Esso gas. The sponsor has its 25,000 dealers located primarily in