Variety (July 1958)

42 B.4DIO-TELE VISION f / SSIEff Wednesday, July 23, 1958 $1,000,000 In Preemptions Continued from page 22 — Congressional investigations of net- woik practices. /“This will, be am¬ munition that all three networks Will probably use,” Qhirilan stated, “to take the heat off them with the Government.” work .at 3 p.m., said it had pre¬ empted some six hours of commer¬ cial time, primarily in the Eastern and. Central Time Zones in a four- day period.: It estimated that it had carried more than 15 hours of special programming on tv and radio and claimed to be the first of the tv chains at the UN last Tuesday when the story broke and that it was the only web on hand to cover the full UN session last Friday «18» morning, devoting ap¬ proximately one and one-half-hours to this event. A" heavy : portion or the coverage was handled by Bill Shadell and John MacVane at the UN and Don Goddard and Quincy Howe in the ABC studios. John Daly. ABC veepee of news and special events, co-ordinated the coverage. When news of the> crisis broke NBC took the l<*ad but soon both CBS and ABC caught up. Unlike the Suez crisis in the summer of 1956 when Egypt seized the canal and radio-tv coverage of the affair was less than mediocre, the net¬ works last week were moved to do | something above and beyond the call of mere public service duty. Top echelon execs at the webs gave their news department heads the greenlight to do a hangup (cov¬ erage and soon preemptions were the order of the day as the news began to break in various parts of the tinderbox globe. Both Bill Me Andrew, veepee of NBC News and John F. Day, di¬ rector of CBS News, were busier than holiday train dispatchers routing their correspondents and cameramen to different news- breaking centers. There were no¬ table performances by such savvy observers as NBC's Chet Huntley in :N. Y., Dave Brinkley in Wash¬ ington; Merrill Mueller at the United Nations; John Chancellor In Beirut; Joseph C. Harsch from London and Irving R. Levine from Moscow. . Indies Assert Selves Numerous indie outlets through¬ out the country hurled themselves into the Mideast crisis with con¬ siderable zeal and vigor. Obvi¬ ously, the list of on-the-ball sta¬ tions was great but among those that shone, with considerably more sparkle were WNYC, . Gotham’s municipal outlet which fed - a score of stations the proceedings from the UN Security Council and WINS, N. Y. indie which drastical¬ ly upset its regular programming structure to bring listeners full live coverage of the UN sessions when other indies were reportedly scratching the “Top 40" melodies of the day. Initiative was also displayed by WERE, Cleveland indie, with direct UN pickups; exclusive shortwave pickups by a ham operator and sta¬ tion engineer of the Russian dem¬ onstration outside the U. S. Embas¬ sy in Moscow; pickups of citizen reaction in various American cities; specially-built 1 i s t eni n g posts in downtown Cleveland; transatlantic interviews with cor¬ respondents; interviewers with pa¬ rents of U. S.: Marines in Lebanon and feeding of UN proceedings to numerous school and college sta¬ tions in the area. Some Soaper Fans Squawk Network execs said they re¬ ceived less complaints this time regarding the bumping of regular, programs; Affiliates in most parts of the coun try gathered from th eir listeners and viewers that the Mideast situation was far top grim to complain about the elimination of a soap opera or two in order to carry the UN Security Council or an overseas pickup. Save for some hyper-thyroid addicts of the wash- board-lachrymals who squawked, statfofis received nothing but vo¬ ciferous acclaim for their fast re¬ porting and appraisals of the de¬ velopments in the Mideast. There Were, however; isolated spots where malcontents objected ! to UN. coverage. In Cleveland it was reported that three of its tv outlels received complaints when regular programs got the heave-ho for UN coverage. James C. "Han- rahan. WEWS general manager, described it as the ‘‘greatest flood of complaints in my whole tv ex¬ perience.” John McClay, general manager. of KYW-TV, and Ben Wickham, WJW-TV general man¬ ager, took the view that their cov¬ erage w’as history in the making and “we’ll stick to network pro¬ gramming these highly important, sessions.” KYW utilized the .West¬ inghouse line along with coverage by Rod MacLeish from its Wash¬ ington Bureau; . The five tv outlets and the six AM stations of the Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. operated with al¬ most split-second precision during the crisis to bring their audiences the latest happenings. The WBC outfit figures it spent in excess of $5,000 for telephone line feeds during a hectic four-day period. It preempted in excess of $75,000 worth of time on tv and approxi¬ mately $60,000 in preemptions on radio. Westinghouse stations de¬ voted 70 hours in coverage of the crisis on tv and 85 hours nn radio during the big four days.- Educ’l TV Bill Continued horn pace 23 —i— quarters of the Univ. : of Houston tv stations, pioneer in the field. ; “You are going to get opposi¬ tion you don’t deserve because some of us are concerned with the appalling national debt,” ad¬ vised Rep. Bruce Alger, long Texas Republican. “Perhaps,” quickly Injected Rep. Walter Rogers, Texas Demo¬ crat, ‘This might be the avenue to smarten up some of the people on how to figure out a balanced budget.” . Continued from pas* fits of it were fourfold and worthy every dime. It was .valuable to the Windy City citizens for the Infor¬ mation it conveyed and the stem¬ ming, if only temporary, of racket¬ eering in Chicago. It created good will for the station (“more,” says Quinlan, “than if we r d doubled our advertising budget for the year”) and should mean business for ,WBKB because the hearings were held during ratings week. Fourth¬ ly, Quinlan feels it will benefit the broadcasting Industry Itself in the Two: things Quinlan didn’t expect when he negotiated the pickup- the fact that blurbing wouldn’t be per¬ mitted and that it Would he. rating week. The two almost cancel each other, he feels. In re the latter, Quinlan expects his" station “to sell like a lion” in August because of the. daytime -posture the ratings are likely to give it. As for the for¬ mer, he indicated that WBKB re¬ couped a number of cancelled spots in make-goods' but lost a number of others when McClellan forbade them. V Quinlan said Pure Oil wanted to buy the show at the beginning, and this would have kept the public service telecast from being a blem¬ ish in the profit and loss books. He was irked at the Senate kibosh on advertising and said the commit¬ tees hereinafter must not expect such video coverage if they expect an individual station (even splitting costs with a newspaper) to shoulder the expense alone. Radio Reviews A SUMMER NIGHT AT RAVINIA WITH RUDOLPH GANZ With Jim Conwayv guests Producer-Director: Len ScMosser 25 Mins., Sat., 8 p.m. BROWNBERRY BREAD WBBM> Chicago (Lilienfeld & Co.) ~ In • .Chicago,, there is such a paucity of class and intellect on the AM band currently that this offering would get lofty stature froin its formidable title alone, if only by default of the city's other stations. Dr. Rudolph Ganz is a venerated composer-conductor-edu¬ cator Che is now president emeri¬ tus. of Roosevelt U.’s Chicago Mu¬ sical College), and the annual Ra¬ vinia Festival-has about it an aura akin to Newport when the latter is not on its. jazz kick. This is class in spades in the Windy City vicin¬ ity, and happily the show itself measures up to the poetic promise of its prolix tag. On each: show Ganz" discourses with the Ravinia guest artists and relieves the chitchat from time to time with excerpts from $heir long¬ hair recordings. Show is taped on the Ravinia grounds during the rehearsal hours, and- often strains of wind-blown music seep into the talk texture of the program' to au¬ thenticate the atmosphere of Ra¬ vinia Park. Ganz is an. affable fel¬ low with an attractive Swiss ac¬ cent, his way of speaking resem¬ bling somewhat that of the late Jean Hershblt. As the catalyst he is best when he gets guests to con¬ verse, weakest when he ; makes it an interview. First show had him probing singers Mildred Miller and Wilma Spence, second (12) had him in an interesting casual ex¬ change with conductor/ William Steinberg; Producer-director Len Schlosser appears to have edited all sag and superfluity from the tapes. Brownberry Bread. commercials are: a bit pushy and hard to sell for this vehicle. Les. Kansas City — Station KNIM, Mary ville, Mo., has been purchased by Wayne ;J. Hatchett, formerly of Independence, Mo., and Harold Eck, Osceola, Iowa,, Hatchett will manager the station. AGAIN/ FABULOUS FIRST RATINGS! W r \\ -A- %w^ uk^ osrADOLPHE menjou SCORES BULL’S-EYES IN FIRST SHOWIN0I GRAND RAPIDS WOOD-TV , Wed. 9:00 P.M. Mm 32.9 Beats: Phil Silvers, GE Theater, Steve Allen, L Twenty One, Groucho Marx, Dragnet, This Is Your Life, Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny and many others. A RB May '5 ZIV TELEVISION PROGRAMS INC. Barry Gray-Basheers Post-Midniter Barry Gray has been a stimulating midnight opinionatot over the WMCA (N.Y.) microphone for many years, usually originating from a nitery but currently back at the studio since: Brooklyn’s Town & Country did an el foldo/ for the summer, anyway. When Gray is interviewing personalities, whose vicarious intent is to plug a play or picture; politicos, who have their own axe to grind; or pals (and he’s gotten : some big names in that department, tdo) it's usually diverting, sometimes rewarding, never dull. ;.. . This past Sunday (20) midnight he gave the WMCA mike to /Egyptian propagandist T. Basheer who turned the Middle East crisis from a political problem, which is globally accepted as fo¬ cusing around the rise of Nasserism, into a “Jewish problem.” The kid from the Cairo belt, whose English was accented, but arti¬ culate, gave beaucoup false accents to “displaced Arabs,” “Israeli... aggression” and the like, To anybody with not a short memory this ; is, of course, the Arab Toad company pitch of the Hitler story. In fact, a plane officer. Identified as Peter Brunswick, talking from a Europe-bound air carrier whom Gray had on his “beeper,” put it into that very language.. Apparently: this was the plane on which Gray, hoped to make his European flight since he has widely dis¬ seminated the fact he was denied a visa to Lebanon “because of my religious faith." Back to Sahib Basheer: his fuff tag is spokesman and press of¬ ficer of the United Arab Republic-United Nations Mission, which Is quite a handful but, by token of that mouthful of billing; also takes in quite a chunk of Middle East terrain. As vocal and articulate as moderator Gray, he was a shade less immoderate in his sparring with the WMCA microphonist. He re¬ fused to be talked down by Gray and, as a Parthian shot, accepted Gray’s challenge (1) to “issue” ffim a visa to Cairo (an authority which a propaganda officer might normally be questioned as hav¬ ing in his power); (2), permit Gray to get on the Cairo radio, with . the same freedom that Gray stated Was accorded Basheer;; and (3), the latter added, he. “would permit Gray to discuss matters with less interruptions than you are according me.” • Without further extending the politico nuances of Israelis ver¬ sus Arabs, or Gray’s accent that there are apparently many happy Arabs on Israeli soil, this particular discussion was a curious ex¬ ploration of political values, from; strongly opinionated opposite corners. It creates a question mark as to the wisdom of throwing out into the airwaves, at an offbeat, obviously somnolent post-mid- , night period, such a sensitized discussion; Anybody from insomni¬ acs in the hay to drunks in saloons, both, of whom may have only recently heard and seen serious analyses and news reports of a global problem, which is the concern of greater pundits than Gray and propagandists than Basheer—from Nippon and the Ganges to the Kremlin and 10 Downing Street and the Quai d’Orsay arid back to the Potomac shores-^suddenly are assaulted with a new ‘•‘interpretation” of Mediterannean woes. This may not be a direct parallel to “fire!,” under.the guise of freedom of speech, but it is an unnecessary refueling of a latent tinderbox, obtuse at the mo¬ ment, at least, to the most critical .world problem today. Gray has , been on another kick of late—the open-microphonf “beeper.” When he apparently senses from the' telephonic vis-a-vis that they are on an even-keel he opens the beeper, but the interview¬ er’s tenseness is exaggerated even greater as he rides herd very closely on the unseen telephonist. Gray is obviously in constant fear perchance that something offbeat or awry could come over, the airwaves. The result is an unwillingness to permit the “beeped” telephone-inner -to really expound. Gray is staccato in cutting-in or over-talking them, airing his own views. It’s a natural concern. Ohe drunk or. bigot could upset WMCA, the interviewer and their, audiences no end. Abel. 9 Continued from pace 27 , commercials may weir be solved, using the technique employed. by KTTV with the huge Barker Bros, furniture store here. / Two-camera remote crew taped 22 commercials after-hours at the store, starting at the ninth floor and working down, over a five and a half hour span. Cost of the blurbs averaged out to $100 apiece with this method. Moore . characterized the clinic as “A Progress Report on the First 60 Days of the Tape Revolution,” and emphasized the word “revolu¬ tion” in characterizing Videotape as the most significant develop¬ ment since the start of television. In pointing up the desirahlity of tape for commercials, he pointed out that it combines the best fea¬ tures of film and live. Station insisted that tape can be. edited, and pointed to the fact that it did edit extensively in the pre¬ paration of Berman’s pilot. New Ampex editing unit, still in proto¬ type. form, was demonstrated, as were the station’s own experi¬ ments in editing. Under present editing techniques, “we won't pre¬ vent flipover 100% of the time/’ it was admitted, but majority of the time, station gets, a clean splice; Also released was the station’s new rate card for tape. Rates ap¬ ply Only to use of the videotape units, with studio-production costs additional. Base rate, either for simul-tape (taping simultaneously with a telecast) or production tape (not simultaneous with a telecast) is $150 for the first half-hour or part, with the producer able to do as many commercials as he can during that span. Editing charge is $50 for a one- hour minimum use of the unit. Duplicate tapes, exclusive of the cost of the reel itself, run $50 for 15 minutes or less up to $150 for 31-60 minutes. Tapes themselves cost $10 a minute for up to 14 minutes, $200 for, a half-hour and $400 for a full hour. Station’s min¬ imum Usage charge is pegged at twice the time of recording, to al¬ low for playback. m BROOKS COSTUMES IVERT OAT ON IVIRY CHANNIl