Variety (July 1958)

V«A»CTJ«r, July 30, 1958 p&Ktr&f y _ KAl>iO*TEfcKVISI»Bf 27 Washington, July 29. . A “code of ethics” for the FCC is in. the works as a result of the regulatory agency's behaviour in the controversial award of Channel 10 in. Miami. The House subcommittee on Mon. (28) gan- dering the behaviour pattern of Federal regulatory agencies okayed legislation for the FCC ethics code. The ethics code bill was agreed upon without change after Sev¬ eral, members of the subcommittee tried unsuccessfully to extend its provisions to other governmental agencies. The “code of ethics” was acted on after a two-hour Closed meeting presided over by Rep. Oren Harris (D-Ark.). The code would set up specific rules for FCC commissioners and other agency workers in connection With pend¬ ing cases. The bill would nix outside contacts with commissioners or staff members about upcoming cases unless, all parties concerned were notified. Also, the President could dismiss corrupt or neglectful commissioners, something he Cannot do now. Prosperity of British Com! TV Reflected in Stock Exchange . London. July 29.. The remarkable prosperity of the commercial tv industry has been reflected on the Stock Ex¬ change during the past w’eek, When there Was considerable activity in the stocks of the program compa¬ nies, as well as in other outfits hav¬ ing a stake in television. The Stock Exchange dealings followed the publication of reports by two of the commercial tv ma¬ jors which indicated that substan¬ tial profits are now being, earned. Associated Television chalked up a mammoth $11,348,000, While As¬ sociated British Pictures attributed their healthy trading profit of $9,775,000 to the success Of their tv subsidiary, ABC-TV. Philadelphia^ July 29. : Television * Station WVUE Was blacked out by storm damage at 8:25 p.m. after a series of brief in¬ terruptions. due to heavy down¬ pour 1.24). • Most listener reaction came from Joe Pyne fans who missed the late night (10:30-12). Controversial gab¬ ber. The WVUE * switchboard was swamped with calls and four ex¬ tras had to be put on Pyne’s own number. •. One . persistent listener unable to get through called, the opposition Frank Ford Show; on WPEN to learn what happened. Pyne, formerly from Los Angeles, has been with station about two ATV shares are not officially months, quoted on the Stock Exchange, but there has been considerable un¬ official activity In the company’s ordinary stock. Par value of the ordinaries is $2.80. but they were being valued at around $17 by the beginning of last week; and were changing hands at over $20 by the end of the week. This afternoon (Tues.) Prince Littler will be pre- siding at the company’s annual stockholders meeting. The activity in ATV has also spurted • dealings in other compa¬ nies with a holding in the commer¬ cial tv web. For example, both Moss Empires and .Stoll Theatres made hefty .gains on the. market at a time when the International crisis news could have J>een ex¬ pected to hurt. While there is no stock Exchange trading bn the shares of Associ- ated-Rediffusion, there was Consid¬ erable interest in the two compa¬ nies Who, between them,, hold most of A-R’s capital. British Electric Traction, the company beaded by financier Harold Drayton, has Wide (Continued on. page 98) . A Civi War Kick NBC-TV appears to be embark¬ ing on a binge df Civil War pro¬ gramming for next year. In addi¬ tion to making a deal, with Dore Schary to write and produce a number of Civil War specials, blBC's Special Project Division is readyingra program for the 150th birthday anni next year of Abra-; ham Lincoln. Donald B. Hyatt, head of .Spe¬ cial Projects, has. hired Richard Hauser to script “Meet Mr. Lin¬ coln,” a half-hour; black and white film With orchestral and vocal ar¬ rangements by Robert Russell Bennett. Format of “Meet Mr. Lincoln” will call for use of Lin¬ coln period ' photographs, prints, woodcuts, . lithographs, posters, sketches, etc. Treament of the Lincoln story, in some respects, Will resemble earlier “Prdject .20” productions. Major innovation will be the use of historic stills in “Meet Mr. Lincoln.” Hanser’s script will be almost entirely , In Lincoln’s own remarks. Date of telecast is not yet set. DownToTricUe The big $5,000,000 Ford deal in¬ volving sponsorship of Bing Cros¬ by,. Rosemary^ Clooney; CBS News Roundups, Ed Murrow and Ten¬ nessee Ernie Ford ovgr CBS Radio looks headed for trouble and will probably disintegrate into a mere trickie of biz with the motor Car maker deciding to stay with Ernie Ford and dropping the rest of. the package. Ford had been riding With the show under , a 52-week deal via J: Waiter Thompson call¬ ing for some 933 station hours weekly. Monday through Sunday With four separate broadcasts each week day, two on Saturday and four on Sunday. . The economic setback which' struck the motor car manufacturers with particular severity is said'to have prompted Ford to cut back oni (he ambitious programming sched¬ ule. As it shapes up now it will stay With Ernie Ford who is on Monday through Friday from 5:05 to 5:20 p.m./ Fact that Crosby has switched allegiance to Oldsmobile (via his ABC-TV specials) was. also a factor in the breakup. = ABC-TV has picked; up $1,500,^. 000 in new and renewed daytime biz, all of It outside the three new hours of pre-dark progfaniming planned for fall. General Mills has renewed for three alternatt-week quarter-hours on “American Bandstand.” Luden’s has taken an undisclosed number of Weekly segs, beginning Oct. 8, in the same show. Also on “Band¬ stand,” Welch has taken alternate- week segs. In the 5:30-8 /.pirn. “Mickey Mouse , Club” strip, which is roughly three-quarters sold for -next .season, B. F. Goodrich has added a small hunk of biz, begin¬ ning in mid March,; 1959. By HAROLD MYERS I London, July 29. There’s ••*/ major new offensive taking shape against the American | influence in British television. The Labor Party, at its annual con¬ ference. at the end of . September, will be asked to support a resolu¬ tion deploring the volume of Yank j material being transmitted on both ! channels, while the Daily Express has launched a broadside exclusive¬ ly against .the commercial outlet. Additionally, members of Parlia¬ ment on both sides of the House I are being actively canvassed to take immediate action, and quotes by MPs. In speeches made during the passage of the Television Act, are/ being c oil a t ed and circulated among interested bodies. The selected quotes, of course,, are designed to emphasize the pledges that Were sought and given on the question . of keeping television British. I The resolution to come before the Labor Party conference has | been tabled by the Association of ! Cinematograph and Television t Technicians. In. addition to de¬ ploring the American influence in programming; “and its consequent , effect on British life and thought and the education of our children,” it urges the National Executive Committee to take all possible steps to halt the development, and to make appropriate representa¬ tions prior. to the renewal of the charters of the BBC and the In¬ dependent Television Authority. . The British Screen and Tele¬ vision Writers Association, which a fortnight ago made representations to the Ministry of Labor and the Home Office for the cancellation of Irving Starr’s work perrnit on charges of Underpayment for scripts, provided the background for the i>aily Express offensive via an interview with Dudley Leslie, one of its two vice-presidents. Leslie/ as quoted by the Express, says the association demands the resignation, of Sir Robert : Fraser, director-general of the ITA, and that the third channel should be given to the BBC. “We . have reached a point of utter exaspera¬ tion with Sir Robert and his cheap foreign material,” Leslie told the Express. According to Express, columnist, James Thomas, the row looming ; now. is not about the 14% of com¬ mercial tv time legitimately handed over to Hollywood, quickies, but about the., serious infiltration of American material into the other 86 % of tv time “which purports to be British.” He then goes on to suggest that almost all the half- hour filmed, series which come under the British quota are mostly .written and produced by Ameri¬ cans; that all but one of the quiz shows is a version of an American program, and the exception comes from Canada; that commercial tv is buying up hundreds of old U.S. comedy scripts so. that British comedians can palm them off as -original; and that drama is becom¬ ing overweighted with plays from across the Atlantic. ; / • A Variety check shows that of the last 10 plays aired! by each of the four, major commercial operators, Granada used five of American '/ origin, ABC-TV two, ATV one and A-R one. Latter, however, was. written by Harry (Continued on page 98) UP 17% IN PAST YR. S London, July 29. British television-viewers jumped to an estimated 22,900,000 for the year ended June 30, 1958, from previous year’s 19,600/000,. an in¬ crease of approximately 17%. Average home set-sider spent 10, hours weekly watching, with' 62% of viewing audience preferring in¬ die commercial programs to those on government BBC. in Dick Clark’s AM Show Out to borrow as many of the tv side’s on-the-air personalities; pro¬ vided they can find sponsors for them before risking airtime, ABC Radio has Dick Clark lined up for a record-and-chatter show. Beech¬ nut, his Saturday night video bank- roller, is understood interested in buying, an undetermined amount of Saturday morning time on the audio web for Clark. : Web boss Edward DeGray is said also to be mulling a nighttime slot for Clark. + . ; Washington, July 29. The CBS $20 million purchase of WCAU-AM-FM-TV, Philadelphia, received FCC Approval but in the course of attaching reservations to its greenlight on the deal, the Com¬ mission revealed it is considering whether it should clamp down on such transactions in the future. The breakdown of the price, only $4,400,000 for land and buildings against $15,600,000 for the operat¬ ing rights, stood out like a sore thumb in view of considerable Con¬ gress'on al clamor about excessive broadcast sales, prices; WjCAU Was sold to CBS by the Philadelphia Bulletin. The ! Commission actually at¬ tached no less than three provisos to . its approval. It reserved the right to cancel the deah if any ac¬ tion it might take on the Barrow report recommendation that mul¬ tiple owners be held to no more than three VHF tv stations in the top 25 markets would'make the new total CBS holdings illegal under new rules. CBS owns the limit ; under present rules, five VHF’s jand 2 UHF’s. Other VHF stations London. July 29. I ^" Milwaukee and Hartford . V . . , “ J \ The second reservation was with . ABC-TV is. reported to be- near-:: respect to any possible develop¬ ing the completion of a deal with ments in the various FCC and Jus- Warner Bros, for the purchase ofltice Department antitrust probes Teddington Studios, at a price be- ‘ and projected antitrust investiga- lieved to be in the region of $700v 000. If the deal is cemented, the studios Will be used for live pro¬ gramming; . Its expected that the !. pact will be finalized inside the ; operated stations is ordered, next two weeks. Hinges on Studies tions. In other words, if network practices are found to be in viola¬ tion and if cither partial o- com¬ plete. divestiture of owred . and . For several years past, Tedding¬ ton has been leased to the Hawker Aircraft firm. It has been general¬ ly known that. ABC-TV has been on the lookout for studio space for some time. The studio is equipped with two ^stages—one of 8,610 sq. ft.rand the other, 10,790 sq.ft. The programmers already have large tv studios in Manchester and Bur- mingham. Shift of Tex & Jinx To WOR Accents Statkm’s Monepoly on *Mr. & Mrs.’ With the Tex McCrary* (Tex & Jinx Falkenburg) set for a twice- a-day, Monday-through-Friday ra¬ dio series on WOR, New York, it gives that station a corner on the Mr. and Mrs. teams. Also it points up anew' that Ed & Pegeen Fitzger¬ ald started that pattern of .break¬ fast-chatting, interspersed with commercials, 17 years ago, and they too, of course, are now back in Uieir original home base. Besides the Fitzgeralds and the McCrarys, Dorothy (Kilgallen) & Dick (Kollmar) and the Alfred W, McCanns Jr. are the other mar¬ ried teams. Last week the longest- ninner on WOR, John Gambling (who now lias John Jr. also doing his own stint on the same station) likewise made it a Mr. & Mrs. oc¬ casion When Mrs. Gambling came on her husband’s show to mark his 30th anniversary on . WOR. The McCanns have only been a six- year Mr. & Mrs. team, when Dora (Continued on page 98) 50% Affil Okay Urns Far On CBS-TV Option Tune CBS-TV says its- new nighttime option time plan will go into ef¬ fect on Sept. 15. Ed Bunker, the web’s affiliate relations topper/ said that over 50% of the stations on the lineup have already signi¬ fied their okay and that no objec¬ tions at all have been voiced re¬ garding the setup. Plan calls for changing prime time options; now. from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m., to 8 to 11 in the eastern time zone. As a consequence CBS option time in the midwest (and in Hollywood, due to. tape) will be 7 to 10 and in the mountain time zone 6 to 9. ; These are weeknight changes/ The third proviso, however, is the one w’hich first hit the light of day .When the sale Was approved conditionally. This one makes FCC reneging possible in the light of the outcome of other and unnamed studies and inquiries ‘‘now being considered or conducted by the . Commission.” Although there have been grum¬ blings from other Congressional sources, it Was during the course of the television hearings held by the House Commerce communica¬ tions subcommittee under the chairmanship of Rep. Gren Harris . (D., Ark.) that the charges of “traf¬ ficking” in licenses came to a head. The FCC was hard pressed during the hearings about sales of statior s for much, more than the value of (Continued on page 98> Months ago, when “Bingo-at- Home” began its giveaway antics on WABD, N.Y., nothing less than a mild revolution in afternoon lis¬ tening patterns was expected. In terms of general audience appeal, the show really has never gotten off the ground, yet the station Says it’s definitely staying on . the air— and the station has its reasons; WAfiD’s 3:30-4:30 bingo cast runs, as a rule, between fourth and fifth in the seven station market, which is about where the tv outlet was before the home-giveaway contest began. Other day, WABD said that Gen¬ eral Foods has bought into “Bingo” for five one-minute participations a week, beginning either late in August or sometime in September. GF joins Standard Brands, which owns a full half-hour a day Of “Bingo.” The new biz comes in the : presently unsold portion. WABD says Standard Brands is staying and General Foods is com-: ing in. ratings apart, because “Bingo” has an “enthusiastic fringe following not reflected In general ratings:” Standard Brands, which has three agencies—Comp¬ ton, J. Walter Thompson and Ted Bates—is understood to be getting substantial sales returns on the strength of the program. It’s ratings? Roughly 1.1 to 1.2 rpul~e). The program has been that way for the last three reports.