Variety (November 1954)

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v> RADIO HEVIEWS PfatiEfr Wednesday, November 17, 1954 ONE IN A MILLION With Fred Allen, Parker Fennelly, Leon Janney, Inge Adams, Don Eriggs, Ian Martin, John Griggs, Janice Mattson, Dr. Herbert Pol- l ac lc Producer-Director: Mert CopHn Writer: Gerald Holland 30 Mins.. Sun. (14), 6:30 p.m. NBC, from N. Y. “One In a Mill! a one-shotter on NBC radio last Sabbath eve (14), was arranged more for edu- cational than fund-raising motives by the American Diabetes Assn. It was, as a .matter of fact,, one of the several casings being fronted by that charity this week in what shapes as an intensive “Be Aware of Diabetes” week. Show starred Parker Fenneliy and had Fred Allen as host and incidental gag- ster. Allen chose to call the result a “parable.” It was an aimless—or so it first seemed—mildly amusing piece that after many, minutes struck its only point. Fennelly was a milquetoast with an overlarge appetite and a tendency for losing more and more weight. The two problems were a source for a se^ ries of loosely tied-together events that provided mild chuckles. Only because the entire show was treated so lightly was it pos- sible for audience to take the close. Finally discovering he was a victim of diabetes (one of the “One In a Million” who knows) he was told—in much the manner of the doctor in the dentrifice com- mercial—that he would be a hap- pier man for all of it. As he learned to eat less, he became less meek and more self-satisfied. Ac- cording to Dr.- Herbert Pollack, closing Jthe half-hour with Allen in a brief question-and-answer period, the idea was essentially true. He’s a doctor and knows best. Art, Nancy Ferrara to Petry Nancy Ferrara is the new Ed- ward Petry sales service, manager. She joins the rep company from Hilton & Riggio agency. Miss Ferrara will handle pro- gram and cost info for Petry. at the Piano * Organ * Celeste COLLEGE QUIZ BOWL With Allen Ludden, others Producers: John Moses, Don Reid Director: Ken McGregor Writer: Nancy Fobes 30 Mins., Sat., 7:30 p.m. NBC, from various places Last year producer John Moses put his novel “College Quiz Bowl” into motion for the first time. This year, the second shdw (13) in the skein was generally entertaining though often confusing to the un- attuned listener. Brainpower of two universities was matched for score, in much the same competi- tive fashion that their respective grid teams might have been matched that same afternoon, Georgetown U.* Washington, D.C., (returning for its second week by dint of its victory status) faced Minnesota. U. The competitive mental gymnastics were bright and fast, leaving the commoner a little stunned by their brilliance. The re- sult of the Georgetown-MinnesoLa combat was a tie, Via the befud- dling numerical scoring system de- vised by Moses, meaning that both schools will be back again this week for another try, This,, the first draw in the series’ history, also means that the $500 scholar- ship award to the. winners will be doubled for the upcoming fracas. (Coin plus a printed tiein is sup- plied by Good Housekeeping mag.) Each institution was fronted by ftfur of its brighter students, ex- changing intellectual salvos over a long list of genuine puzzlers. Video might have helped the casing heard, since the NBC show cut back and forth between the two campuses and N. Y., from where emcee Allen Ludden popped, his queries. There were lots of whis- pered conferences at both schools which annoyed listeners because they filled air but could not be clearly heard. Much of the drama of the sharp competition of mind Over mind was lost because it was hard to Identify the contestant what with the frequency of the cutting back and forth from one campus to the other. Scribbler Nancy Fobes collected a whole book full of diversified stumpers. None were easy, all were interesting, and few failed to stop the experts. Emcee Allen Ludden was slick as go-between on the casing: The entire half-hour had a bright aura, but might best serve as a vidcast where every- thing can be seen as well as heard. Either that, or- the radio casing will have to slow its pace and, hence, lose some of its sparkle. Art. I REMEMBER MAMA • Radio Registry • WGN,IBEW Sign Chicago, Nov. 16. WGN Inc. and the IBEW . last week signed a new two-year pact covering the stations’ radio-tv tech- nicians. Engineers’ weekly pay scales were upped $7.50 retroactive to Oct. 1, with a similar increase going into effect same date next year. New contract was negotiated by WGN engineering chief Carl Meyers and H. Walter Thompson, prexy of IBEW Local 1220. CITIZENS’ FORUM 45 Mins.; Thurs., 7:45 p.m. Sustaining CBC, from Calgary “Can McCarthylsm hoppen here?” was kicked around (11) by two politicians and a. prof on Cana- dian broadcasting Corp.'s October- to-March weekly discussion pro- gram, heard from British Columbia to Newfoundland. Listener groups in every province- meet, hear, dis- cuss, formulate their own opinions —guided by set questions—and send them.in. Points from some are reported on the air every second week. Each province hears only its own, groups’ comments until sea- j son’s end, when highlights from all ! over are presented to all. Program—co-sponsored by Cana- dian Assn, for Adult Education— originates from a different city every week, sometimes in a public meeting, sometimes in a CBC stu- dio. This one, hosted by a Calgary listener group, Knights of the Round Table, Was ably chaired by Donald Leslie, Canadian Pacific Railway’s supervisor of communi- cations. Panel comprised Elmore Phil- pott, onetime socialist, now member of parliament Yor the long-reigning Liberal Party and a Vancouver Sun columnist; Fred Colborne, Social Credit member of the Alberta legis- lature, where his party is in power; and Prof, Grant Davy of the U. of A.’s political science department. ( Davy defined McCarthyism thus; “A technique by which individuals or groups, who may be in the gov- ernment, take advantage of fear of an outside power, intensify and manipulate it to their own ends— denying in the process the very basis on which democracy exists.” He added that it “is a calculated attempt to undermine the whole democratic system through mass- produced smears and fears”—and that its real shortrange target was not communism but the Democratic Party. Davy also believed it could hap- pen in Canada, citing the tempo- rary denial of rights in the 1946 “espionage case” as evidence. Phil- pott didn’t, “because of the general climate here, which would never tolerate McCarthyite techniques.” Colborne (one of whose party's federal members, John Blackniore, has openly praised McCarthy, with subsequent disavowal by its leader Solon Low) wanted to see a judicial committee, which sounded mighty like McCarthy’s, set up “to end the present system of secret police.” Present Canadian handling of “security risks” was explained as secret, with no appeal, Britain’s as secret but with right of appeal. Davy and Philpott agreed that there should be right of appeal to a public tribunal. Half-an-hour of 4 the panel was followed by 15 minutes of lively audience questions, one of them from Basil Dean, editor of the Cal- gary Herald. Entire program was well handled and never got bogged down in bickering, as sometimes happens on this excellent public- service program. Gard. MSI SUPER POWER WGALTV LANCASTER ER, PENNSYLVANIA 316,000 WATTS] Covers a vast, prosperous territory—a rich target for your advertising dollar Steinman Station Clair McCollough, President Pep-es enled by The Horn Blows at Midnight 5 Continued from page 33 Radio Followup Since Bob Smith suffered a heart attack, Bobby Nicholson has been filling as emcee on the NBC radio “Bob Smith Show,” a 10:05to 10:45 ayem strip. Nicholson, Smith’s mu- sical conductor and parttime con- versational aide, took over the chief gab role until his boss re- turns. He was pleasant, showing far more than most tooters who turn talkers, but nothing really ex- ceptional when heard Monday (15). Looks as though Nicholson has been filching from the same joke file most of the network and o&o gabbers use. Just the same, he demonstrated an easy, relaxed style that usually fitted the cas- ing’s light format. Smith, who by the way is nearly as versatile a musician as his replacement, is ex- pected back into the NBC fold (and that means “Howdy Doody” on tv as well) by the first week in Janu- ary. This doesn’t mean, however, that he’ll necessarily take up the same work load as before, but’ll most likely do only, some of the shows each week until he gets, completely back into condition. “The Bob Smith Show” utilizes Clark J)ennis and the Honeytones on the vocal side. They’ve been around since Smith put the show on Initially last spring, Dennis is okay as foil for Nicholson’s wit- ticisms or vice versa, but his voice is weakening, some of the numbers being rendered, not only nasally, but in a wavering- fashion. Art. MEEKER TV, Inc. NE.V yOSK CHICAGO lOS ANGELES : AN 1 H N : i i r G < flAvoe Ip V«* i V <A>‘i v, « VI *■* * i f ■» l ■■ • ■; ' '■ I Vi <y Columbus—Lawrence F. Rhodes, executive secretary of the Franklin County chapter of the American Cancer Society, has been appointed public service director of WBNS- TV, replacing Charles Cady, who resigned to become assistant to the I director: of code affairs : ,o£ NARTB k won’t have to stay at home, like at night. They say, T’d to see Steve but it’s so late.’ They flip the switch and they go to bed and in the morning they get up and Dave Garroway will hate you.” Said Allen: “That’s going to make a shambles of scheduling, I suppose. You ought to put oft* a special show called Shambles.” Weaver: “We have ope.” All this and victuals too, includ- ing brandy set to the torch; plus a rambling sort of vidbiog of„ the prexy and “people I’ve met,” un- der Allen’s prodding. It was in- evitable that forerunners to “spec- taculars” plus: the latter would get into the picture and this phase of the chitchat was at its apex in trade interest, as was perhaps his panygeric of late tobacconist George Washington Hill (American Tobacco, of which Weaver was once the advertising factotum): “A lot of people were scared to death (of him), because he went around with a sort of titanic (the noun 'got lost in mating up with the adjec- tive); the whole thing was very the- atrical the way he lived, with his clothes and hat, always wearing his hat with a fish hook in the hat and a whole carton of Lucky Strikes in the pockets of his specially made suits so he could give the pack- ages away to people. Really he had no interest in anything except selling cigarets; that was his life.” And later on Weaver’s “magnum opus” on the specs that’s worthy of extended quoting from the view; point of the trade genesis of things: ‘Now We Mention CBS’ “When I Came back to NBC I found that in the early develop- ment of television a great many of the hit shows were already on Columbia (in the old days we didn’t mention it but now we do); and the first thing we had to do was to get some hits on NBC because other- wise all of our stations would after a while probably drift and go with CBS. And as you know, at that time the single station markets were a very complicating factor in the business. Some of our stations probably aru still in markets where there are only one or two stations, and so we built a lot of shows that we hoped would get the audience hack; like, well, actually ‘Broad- way Open House’ which was our late night show that was such a great hit in ’49 and ‘50, “The programming (Saturday night) bad been a bird of dog night on television because everybody said nobody would stay home; and we programmed it with the two- and-a-hah-hour show ending with the hour-ana-a-half ‘Show of Shows,’ which was the first time small advertisers could buy in nighttime television. It had many other unusual aspects, and of course brought Max Liebman, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca into the limelight.” (Then a recap of stars of Colgate “Comedy Hour,” “All Star Revue,” Kate Smith’s daytime show, et al). Allen, remarking that the specs have had mixed notices, and that even the “I Like” viewers were saying, ‘but I don’t think it was so spectacular,” asked the prexy for his slant. Said Weaver: “Well, it’s a good argument. I mean there are two sides. The fact is that the spectac- ulars were nam6d many years ago by us in just working out forward planning. We basically had in mind the advertising difference be- tween buying shows on an occa- sional basis as against buying shows that were on every week. And ‘spectacular,’ as people in the advertising business know, is the named used, for instance, for Times Square’s big spectacular signs. Jf you buy an outdoor ad- vertising showing in New York, that’s continuity frequency adver- tising. If you buy a spectacular, you’re spending your money in a little different way—kind of con- centrating it in more of an. occa- sional blast. This led us to be- lieve that the name had values for advertising that were helpful and the fact (is) it was never supposed to be an adjective. That is the critical view and the fact it’s an easy joke to say, well, like every- body, the plugs that we have had are all adjective plugs; but even granting that, I’m not at all sure that the fact that today 75 % of the people know what you mean when you say ‘a spectacular/ { won’t mean that.. . Usually a title of a program or anything—any inno- vation—finally connotes what it is. The spectacular, starting as an ad- vertising thing like we have out- doors, will; I think eventually mean to the public special pro- gramming which is all complete in itself, like a movie or like a play that’s not a series; it’s a show just like they see■*. on Broadway, with a title and people in it and when it’s over, that’s it for the night. That’s the performance.” On color: “I .have never met any- body who saw these ' shows in color—that is to say, any just plain person asagainst'a critic or some- body that is looking at it with a special frame of reference, usually his own witticisms—who just didn’t flip his lid. And this means that when you get 50,000 or 100,000 sets and you send a million or two mil- lion people out on a Monday lijke after your show last Sunday, saying ‘Wow, you should have seen this thing in £olor and that finale, and the clothes they wore!.’—it’s' going to be the thing everybody talks about on the American scene, you know, and that Is going to make them really spectacular in a differ- ent sense again.” MARJORIE WITTY'S AGENCY Wife of N. Y. Merchant Placing Radio-TV Personnel New York has a brand-new agenc$r specializing in the place- ment of both talent and executives with radio and television stations and networks. 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