Variety (April 1956)

Wednesday, April 18, 1956 PtfitelEfY 37 UAmO-TEEE VESIOIV CHICKEN-A-LA-TV CIRCUIT Taped & Fractured Charlotte, April 17. Bob Raiford, WBT's late-night disk jockey, found himself with¬ out a job last week—and with two hours of unplayed tape which vox-popped the, Charlotte citizenry on their reactions to the Nat (King) Cole episode. .. Raiford went <>n the air Wednesday, night (11) with the an¬ nouncement that he would probably get fired for what he was about to do. He had spent the entire day interviewing about 50 townspeople, including the chief of police (the only one who was identified by name), on what they thought about the Cole attack. It was Raiford’s intent to prove tl^at not all in the south are goons. All told, there was enough material for a three-hour show. Raiford had gotten the station management’s blessing to do the program, but shortly before air time the okay was rescinded. Station reversed itself on the grounds that it was too hot to handle. Raiford went ahead anyhow—thus his announcement that this would probably be his last show for WBT. About an hour of the taped interviews had gone over the air when the axe .fell. Raiford was told he was through. Show- closed with the “Star Spangled Banner.” Charles H. Crutchfield, exec v.p.-g.m. of Jefferson Standard Broadcasting, said Raiford was fired because “it has long been company policy not to editorialize on the air on controversial subjects through its announcers or employees.” SAG Wins Jurisdiction Fight With AFTRA Over Electronicam System A three-man American Arbitra¬ tion Assn, panel has ruled, 2 to 1, in favor of Screen Actors Guild on - jurisdiction of DuMont Labs’ Electronicam system such as in¬ augurated by Jackie Gleason on his CBS-TV “Honeymodners” film series. Thus the-American Federa¬ tion of TV-Radio , Artists, which had spught to embrace the system within its scope, loses out in the issue brought by DuMont. Majority opinion, declaring that the questions raised relate only to whether or not the provisions of the' AFTRA Code apply to pro¬ grams produced^with Electronicam, said “we are concerned only with the use of Electronicam to record on motion picture film a program or portions of a program for. later cutting, and editing into a final release for telecast. We do not have to pass upon any of the issues of coverage which might arise if the Electronicam were used to rec¬ ord a television program which is simultaneously telecast.” “Honey- mooners’- was held to be done “in the motion picture manner” and that the system* at issue is pro¬ duced “by a motion picture cam¬ era.” Electronicam is not done “in the manner of a live telecast,” accord¬ ing to the ruling which also fa¬ vored Gleason. AFTRA is expected to appeal on the basis of clauses in the dissent¬ ing opinion that are held to relate to nonfulfillment of certain condi¬ tions, along with assertion that the “middle arbitrator” has made his decision, “which is essentially in a unilateral way” and that, in so do¬ ing, has “plainly frustrated the full, fair and impartial delibera¬ tion to which each party is en¬ titled, and he has rendered a de¬ cision which is fundamentally and fatally tainted.”' '.Counsel for DuMont Labs was the firm of Battle, Fowler, Neaman, Stokes & Kheel. Jaffe & Jaffe repped AFTRA, with William Berger, SAG’s national counsel, in attendance throughout the hear¬ ings. GF Ankles ABC DnnningerShow General Foods is bowing out of its skip-a-week sponsorship in the post-“Disneyland’’ Wednesday night night half-feour on ABC-TV when “MGM Parade” goes off, and American Tobacco will go it alone as alternate-week sponsor of the incoming “Dunninger Show.” Mentalist is definitely set to start May 9, and the network is scram¬ bling to find an alternate sponsor to share the show with Pall Mall. Originally, it had been believed GF was planning to stay with the time through next fall, despite the failure of the Metro entry, but for some reason it changed its mind. Dunninger segment will be pro¬ duced by Ben Frye, Roll On, Radio Boston, April 17. There remains at least one respect in which tv cannot compete with radio—and that’s on wheels. WHDH has come up with a “Request Wagon.” The “Request Wagon” is a truck, with big WHDH signs attached to it, that tours the Beantown traffic areas. Its pur¬ pose is to collect record re¬ quests from drivers and trans¬ mit the requests to the studio by two-way telephone, thus giving Boston autoists a chance to hear their musical faves within minutes after they re¬ quest them. Chevy $8,000,000 On Hope & Dinah; Big Tuesday Nite Chevrolet will load NBC-TV next season with an $8,000,000 time and talent^ outlay. Lion’s share of the boodle will ride on a realigned array of- the 8 to 9 slot on Tues¬ day night. With Milton Berle out of the picture except for doing four specs and Martha Raye’s sta¬ tus very iffy, the permanent Tues¬ day fronts will be J3ob Hope and Dinah Shore. The compdian is blueprinted for half a dozen work¬ outs and Miss Shore for at least eight, based on her click in a couple of Tuesday “Chevy Show” outing this season. There will be six other Chevy programs in the Tuesday setup to total 20, with Miss Shore also continuing her Thursday night quarter-hour (with Tuesday to be dropped). Format and talent components for the other Tuesday shows are not yet worked out, though Jimmy Durante, dropped by Texaco Sat¬ urday night, and Steve Allen may divide a dozen or so shows between them’ under auspices of RCA and Whirlpool, latter having become a unit of RCA some months ago. Meanwhile, one phase of Tues¬ day’s summer pinchhitting duty has been resolved, with reruns of the “Dear Phoebe” series (Peter Lawford) going, in at 8 o’clock, leaving 8:30 open. Mack’s ‘Monitor’ Buy Mack Trucks Is going in for in¬ stitutional radio plugs via a sum¬ mer spread on NBC’s “Monitor.” Mack is joined by the American Trucking Foundation in the “edu¬ cational” campaign headed for the web’s weekend stanza. Drive starts June 30 and runs to Sept. 2 with 42 participations embraced in remote airings aver¬ aging 160 stations. Y Bulova in Spots Jo-Program Realm By ROBERT J. SHAW In the last six weeks, I’ve been talking about television. Out on the lecture circuit, I’ve talked to more than 15,000 tv viewers in 27 states, collected into audiences ranging from a convention of en¬ gineers in Boston to the be-hatted members of the Peoria Women’s Club. I’ve talked, and I’ve listened to what the viewers had to say. Right across the country, there’s a startling unanimity of comment, and because hearing it helped me, I want to pass it on. The members of my audiences comprised a healthy cross section of the nation’s viewers: in Empbria, Kansas^ they were members of the Civic Forum; in Knoxville, Tenn., teachers in the city schools; at White Sulphur Springs, steel ex¬ ecutives and their wives; in Chi¬ cago, 3,000 road builders in con¬ tention. In Maryville, Mo., and in "New Orleans, in Boulder, Colo., and in San Francisco, they were college students. In Detroit they were the city’s English teachers, and in Dallas, Springfield, Pittsburgh, Fall River, Wilmington, Milwaukee, Fort Wayne, Evanston, Norfolk, and Tulsa, they were men and women at luncheon clubs, Rotary meetings, Women’s Clubs, and YMCA dinners. In - Newport News they were beer salesmen in conven¬ tion, and in Rockford, Ill., they were 2,700 elementary school teachers in conference. ‘All'Have Something To Say’ Nearly all of them, in all 6,500 miles of the chicken a la king circuit,, are tv viewers. Nearly all of them have something to say. The most immediate reaction to be gained is the salutary fact, that the day of the tv “hold-out” is over. Five years ago, when I began these annual lecture treks, at least a dozen in any audience approached me after a lfecture and with a peculiar pride, announced that they never watch tv. This seemed to me an attempt to assert intellectual superiority, born of a conviction that to watch tv was a confession of ignorance. This isn’t true any¬ more. I met no one who doesn’t watch tv some of the time, and even the keenest have found some¬ thing to their liking on their channels. Teachers, too, are “with it.” Perhaps because like too many of my colleagues I don’t get out of New York often enough, I was surprised as well as encouraged by the use of tv in the classroom. Said Sister Marie Chantal, of St. Mary Academy in Monroe, Michigan, “Sadler’s Wells Co. in ‘The Sleep¬ ing Beauty’ provided me with meaty laboratory work for my 12th grade English classes. I told them to report their own opinions, and those reports included a brief gen-! eral description of the program, the name of the author and pro¬ ducer, general aims of the program, and degre'e of achievement.” It would appear that in our class¬ rooms as well as in the living room, a generation of discriminatory viewers is being born. When you talk about tv, you hear complaints, and I*d be remiss if I didn’t report them. In analysis, they can be condensed to 10, and they represent those I heard most often. Because they were almost identical,' coast to coast, and often phrased in almost the same lan¬ guage, I think they’re important. (1) Adequate reception New Yorkers seem to take for granted, and we shouldn’t. Springfield, for example, is the capitol of Illinois and a big city. Yet at dinner before my lecture to the B’nai B’rith Open Forum, I heard my hostess say, “ ‘Studio One’ didn’t come in very good last night. Too much snow.” Across the table, a guest replied that on his set “Studio One” came in fine, but “Medic” didn’t come in at all. If In Doubt, Blame Webs (2) At home in Fairfield, I’m lulled into the belief that most viewers across the country have the same wide selection of tv fare (Continued on page 66) With Two for Money’ Rotation Buy; It Looks Like Quite a Sat. Night Saturday night is getting a new The Weekend Trendex NBC-TV lost out on both of its Saturday-Sunday (14-15) specs in the Trendex averages. Saturday’s “Marco Polo” mu¬ sical produced by Max Lieb- man (Alfred Drake, Doretta Morrow) drew clusters of 15.8, 15.7 and 16.2 (average of 15.9) against CBS-TV’s 18 for ; “Two for the Money,” 13.3 for “It’s Always Jan” and 23.6 for "Gunsmoke.” ABC-TV’s Law¬ rence Welk show prevailed against the field with 20.6 at 9 o’clock and 22.3 at 9:30, with “Chance of Lifetime” pegged at 12.4. NBC’s “Salute to Baseball” Sunday night averaged 22.4 with ratings of 22.1, 24.8 and 20.4 from 7:30 to 9. Against it, CBS drew 20.1 for “Private Secretary” and half - hour marks of 23.6 and 33.6 for Ed Sullivan, with ABC’s ‘.‘Famous Films” clocked at 6.1 at 7:30 and 6.8 for the next hour. Murray Is Due For ‘Treasure Quiz As ‘Dollar Gets Axe The Jan Murray-starring “Dol¬ lar a Second” is due for the axe at the end of this season, but Mur¬ ray will be back, on ABC-TV in the fall in “Dollar’s” same time and with the same sponsor in a new quizzer of his‘ own, “Treasure Chest.” Mogen David Wine, Mur¬ ray’s present sponsor, will bank¬ roll the new show, which Murray has packaged via the William Mor¬ ris office, in its current Friday at 9 time slot. “Treasure Chest” is a quizzer with a suspense twist, in which contestants who’ve reached a cer¬ tain cash level then get the choice of taking their coin and leaving or surrendering the coin in favor of selecting the contents of one of 25 or 30 “treasure chests” on the stage. Chests can contain anything from a cheap pipe to as high as $25,000 in cash. This, incidentally, is the same show (with a few modi¬ fications) that ABC-TV itself was high on last fall during the. rush of quiz packages*that followed the success of “$64,000 Question.” “Dollar a Second,” originally im¬ ported from France by Jean Paul Blondeau (whose other interests now include French representation for CBS Television Film Sales) thus ends a three-year run, having started on DuMont and been on ABC-TV for the winery for the past two years. MULL‘SEE IT NOW’ IN‘OMNIBUS’SLOT CBS-TV was reported mulling the idea of slotting “See It Now” shows on Sunday next season to take up some of the slack occa¬ sioned by the moveover of “Omni¬ bus” to ABC-TV. It’s understood the network is “anxious,” also, to have the Ed Murrow-Fred Friend¬ ly series remove itself from the “controversial” category and train its cameras more on domestic sub¬ jects keyed to the national picture. As an example of that, and should the Sabbath 5 to 6:30 berthing jell, the first subject next fall would be Danny Kaye in a film documentary pf his tour through Europe. Another topic being kicked around is the traffic •situation across the country. lease on life as far as CBS-TV Is concerned. A new major develop¬ ment brings Bulova in f o the home- screen picture as a full-fledged sponsor, which indicates that the watch company will lower some of its torpedoes as a prime user of sta¬ tion breaks, amounting to millions of dollars over the years, in radio as well as tv. McCann-Erickson agency for the accoun‘, is taking an alternating hold for its client on the 9 o’clock “Two for the Money,” on which the original sponsor, P. Lorillard, sticks fast to the quizzer. Bulova will .start its sponsorship * on May 5, the best indication that “Money” will not only ride through the summer but continue into the next semester. Herb Shriner, who’s headed the show since the begin- ' ning, is scheduled to move out to star in a full-hour varic y format next season for CBS-TV. The net¬ work has been envisioning 8 to 9 o’clock Friday for the Shriner stanza, but only last week one of the half-hours was earmarked for Ziv TV’s “West Point Story” tele- pix scries under General Foods backing, replacing either “Mama” or “Our Miss Brooks.” CBS must also make room for a Jeannie Carson si'nation comedy skein tagged “Hey, Jeannie” which Procter & Gamble has bought via Four Star Productions (thus switch¬ ing the British comedienne from her NBC-TV identity since arriv¬ ing in this country to appear In several spectaculars). This show will likely oust P & G’s “It’s Al¬ ways Jan” (Janis Paige) as the seque to “Two for the Money.” “Money” and “Jeannie” would fight it out with Sid Caesar at 9 to 10 Saturday next season as the comedian heads for a shift from his Monday slotting to go back-to-back with Perry Como on NBC-TV. However, there are a number of uncertainties, such as the spot for CBS-TV’s 60-minute “Perry Mason” films ba.sed on the Erie Stanley Gardner stories sched¬ uled for a Saturday night berthing. Bulova’s entry into the program sphere will undoubtedly reduce its budget on spots. As an indi¬ cation of this, the timepiece outfit is dropping the 9 o’clock break, just ahead of “Two for the Money,” on WCBS-TV in New York, but keeping its . four other spots on the station. Its two-a-week breaks on WRCA-TV are being axed. There will be more such jettison¬ ing of the quickies, the way the picture shapes. $1,250,000 Elgin Biz Back to JWT 6* Chicago, April 17. J. Walter Thompson has re¬ lassoed the Elgin National Watch Co.’s consumer products account, valued at about $1,250,000, from Young & Rubicam, which had in¬ herited the billings from JWT back in ’51. Moveover date is July 15. While' the timepiece firm’s new advertising schemes haven’t been worked out, it’s understood Elgin will check off its alternate ride on CBS-TV’s “Person to Person” but will probably come back into net¬ work tv in the fall on a new prop¬ erty. George Diebert will be JWT’s supervisor on the account and Carl von Ammon will be the ac¬ count rep. Acquisition of the Elgin book¬ ings brings JWT’s new biz signed for the Chi office in recent months a to nearly $12,000,000. Fattest | coup was the- Schlitz brewing ac- ^ count, worth close to $9,000,000, and the Johnson Motors billings, figured at around $1,000,000.