Variety (August 1957)

Wednesday, August 28, 1957 PfiSttETY TV-FILMS 41 Inside Stuff-TV Films As part of its big push to sell the remaining two-thirds of the Shirley Temple feature series, the NTA. Film Network has put to¬ gether a seven-minute Temple short for agency and advertiser screen¬ ings. The short consists of clips from “Wee Willie Winkle’* and “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” two of the four features slated for pre-Christmas telecasting on the NTA Film Network. Ideal Toy Co. has underwritten one-third sponsorship for 64 markets. Television Programs of America has retained Jay Emmett Associates, character merchandising organization, to represent TPA in licensing of three tv film series, which are “Fury,” “New Adventures of Charlie Chan," and “Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion.” Emmett has been doing the licensing on “Superman” and will con¬ tinue on that series, which now has about 60 licensed items in retail distribution. * USSR Shooting Telefilm On British Way of Life In Reciprocal Pattern London, Aug. 27. Vladimir Osminin, director of Moscow State Television,, and Ro¬ man Tihomirov, a staff interviewer for MST, are due to arrive in Brit¬ ain within the next couple of days to make a 60-minute telefilm about the British way ol life. At present a tv script, prepared by the Russians is being studied by an Associated-Rediffusion camera crew, who’ll leiise the documentary for the Reds. The London weekday commercial tv programmers have made a reciprocal arrangement with the Russki tv outlet whereby each organization is lending the other camera and other facilities for a documentary film. A-R staffers Caryll Doncaster and Michael Ingrams are sched¬ uled to go to Russia at the end of next month to make their film. The Soviet script aims to show the domestic scene in a typical English home, and among other things, visits to Cambridge U. and a state¬ ly home. It is likely that the docu¬ mentary may be screened here as well as in the USSR. Duram ^ Continued from page 31 — fied, but that the line should be drawn at that point. Position of Dura mis especially revealing because his agency has operated principally in live tele¬ vision in the past via the Alcoa ac¬ count, which has gone to film for the first time in its upcoming “Alcoa-Goodyear Anthology” out of the Four Star F^lms production stable. If Alcoa doesn’t like what it sees in the film situation, it can j be expected to act as \a spark for other advertisers dissatisfied with the economic structure of films. Beyond the pass-along practiced, Duram sees other forces at work which may swing the programming trend back to live. One is the ques¬ tion of- cost itself, even without considering the matter of mid-sea¬ son cost increases. Live program¬ ming is cheaper than film, and with television in a perpetual cost spiral, a return to live programming may become mandatory for some adver¬ tisers. Another related issue is the fact that film producers have been rely¬ ing on the rerun syndication mar¬ ket for their profits, and that mar¬ ket is gradually becoming so crowded with product that It may no longer be reliable as a source of profits for the network-oriented filmmaker. Hence, he may have to raise his prices to get a profit out of the firstrun in the near future. Finally, the toll-tv spectre is an¬ other consideration, insofar as stars MAURICE SEYMOUR Pb E P. o A 2 W A v NEW are concerned. One reason for switching from live to film, Duram believes, Is the availability of top Hollywood stars for film shows as contrasted with their relative un¬ availability for live dramatic pro¬ grams. But once toll-tv Is estab¬ lished—if it is—the stars will quit [ free-tv in favor of toll, leaving the film sponsor with no reason to stay with celluloid. Gould Continued from page 31 ^= the normal kinescope. Higher quality is achieved through the different approach. Moreover, other controls are applied to the film in the actual transmission of the finished film which further en¬ hance its quality. Gould points out that the differences between film and kinescope are levelled off, first via the electronic limitations of the television studio, and then in the reproduction on the tv re¬ ceiver. Increased quality of the kinescope, or “telefilm,” process is such, that there is little differ¬ ence between film and kinnie at the receiver end. Apart from the obvious ad¬ vantages of lower costs due to the inherent cost differences between live production arid ^m produc¬ tion, Gould cites the fact that un¬ der the dew system clients and agencies can monitor the commer¬ cials as they are being shut; a multt- ! camera setup can be and is used; and at the same time shooting does not have to be sequential, with the regular editing process used in film production also used in the new -telefilm recording system. Moreover, processing is completed in 38 hours or legs, while all mat¬ ting, titles and other optical ef¬ fects/are introduced electronically without haying to farm out the work to an optical house as is the practice in production of film com¬ mercials. Finally, Gould points out, the savings inherent in the system pro r vide an answer to an age-old agency problem—getting enough plays out of the single commercial to amortize the high cost. Under the new system’s savings, agencies can produce additional commer¬ cials which take fewer plays to amortize, yet don’t irritate the audience through constant repeti¬ tion of the same blurb. System was developed by Gould in his Telestudios, which operates a live closed-circuit studio setup utilized in the past largely for pretesting of commercials and programs. Venezuelan TV . 5=5 Continued from page 2 € . ute tv newsreel and.among the 10 sponsors of the live “Club Femin- ino” show are Bristol Myers, Col¬ gate, Philco arid Bendex. One of the unique features of the show k that there is a membership tie-in, under which members of “Club Feminino,” pay $1.5Q per month," for which they’receive a discount card for. the purchase of merchan¬ dise in stores, a monthly women’s magazine, the privilege of attend- ling a free “Club Feminino” show every month, and the right to par¬ ticipate in the door. prizes. The | show, in the air only two months, ! has a membership of about 11,000. The number of sets in the country is put at 150,000. But ac¬ cording to Cruz, the number of sets will Increase markedly over the next few years, with the ex¬ pected growth in population, which now totals about 6,000,000. In the span of tv’s bow about three years ago, radio has been taking a beat¬ ing there* with many big adver¬ tisers switching over to tv. Features on tv, mainly Argentine films, are being programmed in afternoons and late night periods. Morrison’s Coast Prowl As U.S. Steel Story Ed ■ Hollywood, Aug. 27. Gerry Morrison, BBD.&O pro¬ ducer-director, will be permanently based in Hollywood to scour town for story properties for the The¬ atre Guild’s weekly hour drama show on CBS-TV, to be alternative¬ ly sponsored by U, S. Steel and Armstrong. His official title will be that of story editor of the U. S. Steel Hour, which originates in New York. The move was prompted by the need for important stories. ‘Fat Cat’ Status of Vidpix r Continued from page 31 ; number of projects around, hoping to be able to jump into the breach. ( Three, the network successes in i programming, if at all adaptable in the half-hour filmed format, will be looked on for copying, some¬ what differently, of course, for the syndication market. ] 4. Despite the comparative \ healthy state of syndication cur-j rently, some researchers feel wor-j ried at what they term the danger signals in the economy. -They maintain the late sell. on the net¬ work level this season, indicative of the changed position in many large industries, in all likelihood will be reflected on the local level, among the big regionals. etc., in about another year. In this group, there’s talk of business plateaus, growing competition among syndi¬ cators with more product on the market, and the advertising dollar remaining comparatively static, if not promising to decline. That’s the pessimistic picture, a portrayal belied by the current times, and challenged in other syndication quarters. '7*3 Tony Rates WEEI Tops By ANTHONY LA CAMERA IF I DIDN’T know any better, I’d have started worry- j ing long ago about radio station WEEI. It doesn’t blare j out slogans; ^doesn’t identify itself with deafening jingles; j the golf abilities of its personalities remain a dark secret; , it doesn’t live by lists of top tunes; its disinterest in baro¬ metric pressure amounts to sheer irresponsibility, and not one of its personnel has ever stepped inside a stock car. Despite such palpable negligence, especially while so I many other radio stations are striving to out-do each other j with gimmicks, WEEI keeps rolling along without giving j cause for worry. It consistently ranks 1-2-3 in ratings j competition and, from the financial standpoint, it is enjoy- | | ing its best year since World War H days. So how come? Very simple. If WEEI doesn’t have j a slogan, it certainly has a policy—an insistence on bal- i anced broadcasting. Aware that they can’t please every¬ one at the same time, its programmers stick to an over-all | schedule which includes network and local shows in just j I about every category. As Boston’s CBS affiliate, it runs the network’s varied j offerings of drama, mystery and adventure shows (CBS Radio Workshop, Suspense, Indictment, Gunsmoke, The FBI in Peace and War, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar), : soap opera (Helen Trent, Ma Perkins, etc.), comedy, (Sez ! Who, the Stan Freberg Show, Amos ‘rTAndy), variety (the ; Robert Q. Lewis and Rusty Draper shows), music (Wool- j worth Hour, Summer in St. Louis, World Music Festivals), ; news and information (Ed Murrow, Lowell Thomas, Invi¬ tation to Learning, World Tonight, Capitol Cloakroom)* All this and Arthur Godfrey, too. Local Talent Featured ON THE LOCAL LEVEL, WEEI maintains one of the few remaining house bands in American radio—the Frank Bell Orchestra, which provides accompaniment for Carl | Moore’s daily Beantown Matinee. .This “live” program, in turn, has provided a rare opportunity for such local talent as baritone Bill St. Claire, the Hampton Sisters, Priscilla . Howe, the Valenti Sisters, and Pat O’Day. In its hews, sports and feature departments, the station features such “live” personalities as Pri sc ill a Fortescue, Charles Ashley, Ralph Morse, Ed Myers, George Richards and Fred Cu^gk. Spoi;tscaster Cusick, who handled the play-by-play last winter for CBS-TV’s hockey telecasts, will be reporting all the Boston College football games on WEEI ; uextfall. The station even prefers to consider those who spin rec¬ ords for it as personalities, rather than as disk jockeys. ! : Whatever the classification, Tom Russell has been doing a i ’. fine platter-and-chatter job each morning; John Marion dis- j plays excellent musical taste on his Saturday-afternoon ( show, and Jerry Howard has a faithful late-evening follow- -i ing* ° Anyway, It’s quite obvious from the foregoing that bal¬ anced broadcasting—meaning the inclusion of something for I i everybody—can and does pay off in the long run. <-