Variety (December 1954)

Wednesday, December 8 , 1954 33 attractions last season . (a good one too, by Present standards) was just 41 per cent of the j mber for the season of 1933-34; but with clt^ed-circuit and subscription TV, I am con- vnad that We could realize the necessary t ipital to arrest this dismal descent that makes jv, f esS or Saxon’s graphs and his text anything but light reading.for people making a living < the theatre. The road presents an even more discouraging decline: from 1,152 playing weeks a-d a total gross of $23,657,900 in 1948-49, for example, to 794 playing weeks and a total gross of $17,623,200 last season. Speaking of making a living in the theatre, professor Saxon had this to say: “In 1953 total employment of actors in the living theatre amounted to only 991— less than 15 per cent of the number employed in the 1927-23 season . . . The average income from the living theatre of \il professional actors and actresses throughout the country for the 1952-53 season was only $800 per person . . . The average annual earn- ings of all those who worked twenty-six or more weeks was under $6,000.” Nor is this all. Today production capital re- quirements are large and involve great risk. And these factors affect not only the actor but the producer, author and designer as well. Con- sider the steady increase in the one-set produc- tion. While examining what TV can do /or the theatre, when properly harnessed, it may be instructive to ask ourselves, “Why one of the varieties of pay-as-you-watch TV rather than the regular commercial brand?” The answer is clear. Much as we deplore commercial TV’s effect on theatregoing, this form of entertain- ment isn’t going to drop dead. Neither can it come to the theatre’s aid by buying first-night performances for national showing, for the simple reason that no sponsor can afford to do so. Dr, Millard C. Faught, Zenith’s economic consultant, got at the heart of the matter when he told the New York Society of Security Analysts: “The Achilles heel of regular TV is that it has no intrinsic economics of its own. Therefore everything it does must be subsidized by some other economic function. So far ad- vertising has given television its sole economic sustenance, with some very limited exceptions *. . . Subscription television, by contrast, is not ! only a complete and instantaneous TV distribu- . tion system but also has its own built-in eco- ! nomic system.” And from the watcher’s point of view, the current mode of TV gives him rath* :• little to say about what he sees. It is true that present television does provide w ik for some actors, and for this they are grateful. But present commercial TV is drawing on the theatre without making an appreciable contribution to it; there is no chain reaction to benefit the theatre that an opening night on subscription TV would provide—no funneling of admission .charges back into the theatre to make possible continuing production and con- . tinuing employment. Now contrast this with closed-circuit or home subscription televising of a Broadway first night. During the course of a year’s run perhaps four hundred thousand persons might see a smash hit on Broadway. With one of the new modes of TV, twenty times that number might see the premiere alone. Dr. Faught made this striking observation: “If all of us who now have sets paid only the price of a bus ride to and from a theatre as our admission fee to South Pacific on TV, the total revenue would far exceed all that this great musical show grossed in five years on Broadway. And millions of people would still want to see the play itself.” That last sentence is not to be overlooked. On any given night that a theatre performance is available on closed-circuit or home subscrip- tion television, only a small percentage of the potential audience for it will take advantage of the opportunity. This should allay the fears of the producers and actors who think they detect the specter of technological unem- ployment lurking in the wings. The production actually would benefit from what the trade calls word of mouth. There would still be audi- ences for the production both on Broadway and eventually on the road. In fact, there might well be a new theatre audience created in areas where there is little or no professional theatre— and this audience might be stirred to see living theatre in a playhouse the next time it got to New York or another large city, or when a road company reached its vicinity. These new forms of TV can be theatre's best advance men, in fact. Chiefly, though, the financial impact of the sub- scription revenue would be such that it would greatly reduce the present hazards of backing a show. One performance on TV might very well be enough to recoup the entire production cost. Think what this would mean to the chances of a marginal production—one which received unenthusiastic reviews—for a run in this hit-or-flop economy of ours. Many a show which now dies a quick death might be made to pay off. And think what a happy effect this would have on strengthening the reservoir of production .capital—and consequently on em- ployment in the theatre. Remember too that we are not dealing in the cloud-like realm of speculation. Only that small percentage of the potential audience for closed-circuit or subscrip- tion TV would be necessary to provide this cushion. Even if the show didn’t survive much more than that initially televised performance, the actors and everyone connected with the pro- duction would benefit, and theoretically the capital would stay in the theatre for future production. The element of risk would be eliminated. There would be more production at higher standards. And there would be millions of critics instead of the present smaller number. There are other possibilities too. One of these might be to film a play which has at least limited success directly from the stage, at the time it is about to close. This film could then, be made available to subscription TV buyers. And this bears on another important point—the strong position of the stage in the TV picture. In the early days of television, the novelty of the medium was enough to satisfy the average viewer. Now it has long ceased to be enough. And theatre has what it takes to please the more discriminating spectator. Lest there still be some skeptics who doubt my motives in advocating something that seems to compete with commercial TV, let me point to another side of the entire TV picture, a side that actually makes a strong case for the pay- as-you-see system as a benefit to all television. Whereas we now have approximately 380 sta- tions supported by advertising, we could have close to a thousand, provided additional sources of revenue were present. Something like Phone- vision might provide that additional source. The Zenith people feel that subscription TV may well determine if many areas of the coun- try—the less populous ones—ever get any form of television. They reason that under present high costs, the advertiser cannot afford to go beyond the major markets in presenting his show. This leaves the station in the smaller area dependent on local sponsorship—if it can get such sponsorship—and the size of the if in the foregoing is indicated by the high mortality rate among these stations. Closed-circuit and home subscription TV will make the station operator independent of the economic require- ment of network affiliation. Television now sends all its bills to advertisers, and about half its bills to less than twenty national sponsors. This illustrates that angels are very important people in TV too, and it isn’t so far afield from theatre when you consider the ground we’ve covered. Pay-as-you-see TV can do a lot for theatre. Theatre can also do a lot for TV—and without commercials. Subscriber’s decoder for Home use in unscrambling pictures transmitted in the Phonevision Air-code system. Information for setting the decoder is contained on punch cards received by mail, on cards purchased at a vending machine, or received orally over the telephone. The settings apply to t^e customer's individual decoder. A typical combination of the operating methods employed by the Zenith Radio Corporation in Phonevision, its brand of subscription TV. theatre Arts Council in the Interest of the Welfare of the American Theater