Variety (October 1958)

26 ■VlEAflS VeJncfiday, October 8, I95S f'MuETt ? Screen Gems, CNP to Get Moving On Tape; CBS Him Still Holds Out Screen Gems and California Na¬ tional Productions, ;two of the larger telefilm houses, expect momentarily to jump into the syndication of tape progra mmin g. Even as the final steps are being taken to line up tape shows, both companies recognize that it will be a year or more before tape will realize its full syndication po¬ tential SC, a subsidiary of Co¬ lumbia Pictures, figures the first program they do on tape will be a "stopgap.” CNP, the NBC sub- sid, wants to go into tape immedi¬ ately, despite the fact that only 26 markets are geared for tape; projection, in order to experiment with the market. Plans were revealed by high officials of both companies. The inevitability of the moves gives four telefilm companies a declared stake in tape production. Guild Films has" scheduled immediate entry into tape with the announce¬ ment of several shows for sale. Al¬ though National Telefilm Asso¬ ciates has not indicated a similar i shortrange plan to syndicate tape, j It recently bought into Tele-. ■ studios, a N.Y.'tape production, house. SG Is working on the acquisition of a property now. Only a few days ago. It was explained by the SG official, his company was 'on; the verge of taping for syndication a tv program that is now being' done live in the N.Y. market, -but; the pending deal fell through. | He stated that the company still; p]—- to do a show, although he v not specify which one. which just had a hoard i on tape, is eyeing a dra¬ in : r.ow presently on network' as . s first taped offering. The; name of the program was not provided, hut it is assumed, be¬ cause there are no live dramas of half-hour length on coaxials now, that it will be a revamped tele-; film series. CNP says immediate entry will allow It to examine realistically pricing and conditions in tape' syndication. SG hopes to overcome the dearth of markets installed with tape by jointly producing for tape and kinescope replay. The non¬ tape tv areas will be sold 16m kinescope prints of the stanza. Gn the other hand, NBC’s Cal Nat is still investigating the method of getting into the non¬ tape markets, although the com¬ pany was bullish about an early decision. Meantime, CBS Film Sales flat¬ ly declared that it was not going into tape syndication at this time. Company was unmindful that jurisdictional problems have not been ironed out, at least to its satisfaction, also that the re¬ stricted market and high cost of tape prints made it unfeasible. K1TV Heavy Sked Of Vidpix Preans Hollywood, Get. 7. Eleven first-run vidpix series have been scheduled by KTTV to premiere within a one-week period beginning today (Tues.), as the Times-Mirror-Metro station gears for a major push of syndi¬ cated produ' 4 * this fall. Well over 50% of its total programming is to be devoted to syndicated entries, with 27 out of 36 class AA pro¬ gram time devoted to that type of show. Lerding off Oct. 7, station will preen "This Is Alice,” NTA skein starring moppet Patty Ann Ger- rity; "CoL Humphrey J. Flack,” Jody-Pam Productions item cur¬ rently lensing at Metro* "New York Confidential,” TP A series top¬ lining Lee Tracy; and "Dial 909,” Ziv-produced string featuring Bob- ert Batty. Kicking off Oct 10 are TPA’s "Tugboat Annie”; .“Citizen Sol¬ dier”; Ziv’s Richard Carlson star- rer, "Mackenzie’s Raiders”; and NTA’s “How to Marry A Million¬ aire.” Pair of NTA oater entries, "U.S. Marshal” and "Man Without A Cun,” will occupy back-to-back slo.3 ly :. Oct. 11. Final s:~: ■.- * :Iong push will be Id’'. “ c ; . ’.'dimmed "Pa¬ role” series, debuting Oct 13. HIGH NOON’S’ TAIL' PAYOFF ON CHI TV Chicago, Oct. 7. "High Noon,” feature with which WGN-TV debuted its new program of Thursday night blockbusters, scored a sizzling average rating of 37.8 and an average share of 76% according to the latest ARB. Film was shown Sept 11. Audience was one of the largest ever to view a feature film on Windy City channels. "High Noon” hit a high quarter hour rating of 43.6, and ARB estimates it played to 1,024,000 Chi area homes. WGN- TV has decided to rerun the film later this month on a Saturday evening, still not specified. Understood the station paid around $16,000 per film for the features in the "Champagne Pack¬ age” of National Telefilm Associ¬ ates, highest amount shelled out by a Chi station for cinematics. It^s the films from that package that are getting the Thursday night slotting. 20th-Fox TV Dickers Swope Hollywood, Oct. 7. Twentieth-Fox is negotiating with Herbert Bayard Swoope Jr., whose producer pact at the studio winds at the end of this month, to move over to its tv subsid, TCF- TV, as exec producer-director. As such. Swope would function as the right-hand man of production chief with Herbert Bayard Swope Jr., was associated in television years ago in N. Y. Swope, whose last 20th pix were 'The Bravados” and "The Fiend Who Walked the West,” is under¬ stood agreeable to moving to the tv subsid. A participation deal, is being discussed. • Before Swope joined 20th, he was under contract to NBC-TV (from 1949 to 1955), as a pro¬ ducer-director, and prior to that was with CBS-TV from 1946 to 1949. ‘SEA HUNT’SHOWS IT CAN BE DONE _ Ziv’s "Sea Hunt” is kicking up some Tatihg capers. According to. Arbitron, the Lloyd Bridges stafrer ranked as the No. 1 show in the seven-station N.Y. market for the week of Sept 21. It scored a big 39.3 in its 10:30-11 p.m. WCBS-TV time slot. The program that ranked second was "Gunsmoke,” the 10 p.m. Saturday lead-in on the same sta¬ tion. The western hit 37.7 It’s one of the few times that a syndication show has outranked all the network entries for a given week. It happened at a time, though, when many of the top- network entries, including "Gun- smoke,” were playing off summer reruns. "Sea Hunt” ,won*t go into its 13-week rerun cycle for an¬ other week or so. Moral of the rating tale appears to be a hot syndication entry can top all the network offerings, if rerunitis has set in on the webs. Oliver Unger Abroad Oliver Unger, National Telefilm Associates prez, left for Europe on a combination business-pleasure trip.. It’s expected while abroad that he’ll give the once over to foreign pix for both theatrical distribution by NTA and more importantly to possible tv distribution. Recently, NTA acquired distribution rights to features produced by French filmmaker Paul Graets. Pix in¬ clude “Devil in the Flesh,” "Rome, 11 O’clock,” and “God Needs Men.” They’re being issued to tv with English dabbing. Edum Smith Heads Up ABC Films Int’l Setup ABC Kims, which has been on the prowl for a foreign manager, has inked Edwin J. Smith as di¬ rector of mternational operations. For the past two years, Smith was v.p. and general manager of Allied Artists International Co. and Interstate Television, a subsia of Allied Artists. Headquartering in London, he supervised sale's and operations for continental Europe. Prior to that. Smith, was assistant foreign manager for RKO Radio Pictures. AT ABC Films, he will Teport to prez George T. Shupert. Raul Con- angla, Latin American sales coords inator at ABC Films, will continue in his present post, reporting to Smith. Gale Storm Show For $2,000,000 Don’t Shuffle Your Sequence’ Hollywood, Oct. 7. Growing source of irritation to Hollywood telefilm producers is the ad agency habit of shuffling the sequence of episodes in a giv¬ en series. Practice has now reached the point where some produ¬ cers are inclined to feel it damaging ^o the success of the series. Most frequently, the shuffle takes the form of shelving the pilot film for a few weeks and premiering a new series with a subse¬ quent episode. Producers feel this tends to bring the series on cold, without establishing the premise or introducing the charac¬ ters in their proper background. In other instances, agencies will > reverse the sequence of some episodes, and in shows where charac¬ ter is developed progressively from‘episode to episode, this too is felt to be harmful. Bert Leonard, producer of "The Naked City,” which falls into the latter category, feels there’s no reason for the shuffling, par¬ ticularly in the case of holding back on a pilot. "J can understand their reasoning. They feel that there’s too much exposition at the sacrifice , of entertainment values in a pilot. But if that’s the case, it’s just not a good pilot, and they shouldn’t have bought-it in the first place.” Reason for the switching appears to be the fact that the agen¬ cies, as new prints arrive, find shows that they prefer to earlier ones, and in an effort to establish the property, feel they’re putting their best feet forward at the start of the series. But, some pro¬ ducers feel, they’re actually hurting the show by doing so because it’s not given a chance to develop as planned. Instances of the pattern so far this season include “Northwest Passage,” "Naked City,” ‘iPeter Gunn,” “Dragnet,” "Bin Tin Tin,” to name a few. In the oase of "Dragnet” and "Rin Tin Tin,” it doesn’t matter since both properties are well enough established, but in the other cases there may be a direct bearing on the success of the show. In a $2,000,000 deal, the fast- moving Jack Wrather-sparked ITC- TPA bought ’"The Gale Storm Show” from Hal Roach studios. Involved are 111 half-hour epi¬ sodes, including the current series being shown over CBS-TV and 38 future episodes now in production at Hal Roach Studios. Program is sponsored by Nestle Co. Since ITC-TPA is affiliated with Associated Television Ltd. <ATV) of England, a berth in Britain vir¬ tually is assured. Buyout of the Roach property brings' the ITC- TPA roster of network and syn¬ dicated programs to a total of 16. Carlson Advocates ‘Stock Company’ Of Scripters for Series Triple-threat man Richard Carl¬ son feels that producers of action- adventure skeins should follow the policy on writers adopted for comedy projects. Action-adventure series should have a “stock com¬ pany” of writers working on the particular skeins, rather than farming out the scripting to a large group of freelancers. Carlson, who stars in Ziv’s “Mac- Kenzie’s Raiders,” sounded off on what is commonly , recognized as one of telefilms* major problems— how to come up with a good, dis¬ tinctive script in a beltline setup? More money alone, according to Carlson, isn’t the answer. “The financial inducements are already more than satisfactory to attract good writers. In recent years, a hard core of several hundred tv writers has been developed. They, get as many assignments as they can handle—from the standpoint of overall quality, almost too many. With residuals on top of initial j payments, it’s hard for a writer to I turn down an offer no matter how busy he is.” ‘The answer lies in getting a small group of script writers to concentrate on one series.” Carlson claimed that such a system works in favor of getting a distinctive consistent quality to the Series, with the writers then , well-ac ! quainted with the characters and the motif- of the project. He con¬ tended that “Raiders,” which oper¬ ated on the "stock company of writers” principal, shows the fruits of such .a system. Carlton, in addition to starring in the series, has written three scripts for the skein and plans another three. He also directs some segments. UA’s 75$ AAP Stock United Artists has received enough Associated Artists stock to give UA approximately 75% of the shares outstanding. UA, in the wake of buying con¬ trolling interest in AAP from the Lou Chester group, made a stock tender offer to other AAP holders on Sept. 12. UA board chairman Robert S. Benjamin indicated that shares sufficient to give UA 80% of the stock will be tendered within the coming week and that it win not be necessary to extend the tTA in¬ vitation beyond the scheduled ter¬ mination date of Oct. 16. Leonard Sees ‘Realism’ Inviting 8 DET. CLIENTS FOR CNP‘CAMEO THEATRE’ California National, NBC’s film sales arm, has chalked up a sale of 26 skeins of the “Matinee The¬ atre” currently being peddled as "Cameo Theatre.” 1 Eight days after the sale to WWJ-TV in Detroit, Peter Griffin Woodward, reps for station, had the series sold out to eight partici¬ pating advertisers. The program was kicked off in Detroit on Oct. 6 and in order to allow for schedul¬ ing/ station had to preempt net¬ work time of 10 to 10:3(h ‘Big Story Rights Go to Flamingo In the first deal of what is hoped 1 to .be a longterm commitment, I Flamingo Telefilm Sales acquired j distribution /rights to "The Big Story,” produced by Pyramid Pro¬ ductions. Agreeing to give up distribution' rights to “Big Story” was Official j Films. Official wa$ ‘ distributing "Big Story” and another Pyramid property "Decoy,” which it still distributes. Switch took place in j the midst of negotiations between Official arid Guild on a possible merger. Official recently was taken off the listing of the Over- the-Counter-Exchange in N.Y.,. when its stock dropped below one point. Flamingo prez Herman Rush said that the' "Big Story” takeover; signalizes a longterm ‘Raison with. N.Y.-based Pyramid. Latter, com¬ pany has an ‘Indictment” pilot, a projected series starring Richard' KilejK and based on the. activities nf the N.Y.- district attorney’s of¬ fice. No derision-has been made as yet on whether to put "Indict¬ ment” into syndication, but Flam¬ ingo hopes to have at least three properties yearly in the syndica¬ tion mill from a variety of sources. Preliminary . talks with Buck¬ eye Corp., a farm equipment manufacturing concern, and Flam¬ ingo on financing have riot gone beyond the exploratory'stage. Banner Expands Staff In releasing "Night* Court” for syndication, Banner Films^ boss Charles McGregor bolstered his sales staff by hiring Bill Vidas as midwest district manager and Sam Posner to perform similar duties -on the Coast. KREM, Spokane, Washington; K RGP, Chattanooga, Tenn., and WNEW, N. Y., are the first pur¬ chasers—of the 78 half-hours in “Night Court,” a series which "be¬ gan locally on the Coast last year. Hollywood, Oct. 7. Next major trend in television programming will be toward highly realistic programs, almost docu¬ mentary in their approach, in the opinion of Herbert B. (Bert) Leon¬ ard, producer of “Naked City,” which bowed last week on ABC-TV. Leonard believes that the mood of the American audience is to¬ ward realism, and that it has be¬ come satiated with straight dra¬ matic fare. The documentary ap¬ proach satisfies the yearning for realism, he points out, and is fresh and offbeat enough' to arouse new audience interest. Beyond this , documentary style lends itself to television’s sense of immediacy. Jf Leonard sets the trend with “Naked City,” he’s ready .to follow it up with a televersion of “Brute Force,” feature which he bought in the same package with “City.” He’s also dickering for other prop¬ erties in the same milieu, figuring that if “City” clicks, thereTl he a strong demand for others of the same type. Leonard, who’s produc¬ tion-distribution pact with Screen Gems expires at the end of May, isn’t sure whether he’ll put “Brut* Force” into- work for next season, but will definitely develop, it for the following year. Currently, producer is rapped by three shows, “City,” “Rin Tin Tin” and the SG-syndicated "Rescue 8” stanza. He’s completed this sea* son’s 26 stanzas of "Rin Tin Tin” and is now concentrating on pro¬ duction of "City” in New York and ^‘Rescue 8” here, thus being the only telefilm producer working on two shows localled 3,000 miles apart at the same time. Leonard’s dividing his time equally between the two Coasts, spending two weeks in N. Y., two (Continued ,on page 46) Transfilm Names Operation Heads Transfilm proxy William Miese- gaes picked two men to head his tv operation. Robert Bergmann becomes Teepee in charge of the television division of the company, Thomas Whitesell, triper in charge of motion picture production; * The two men were operating heads * of their departments for some time, although there has been no official tv or production boss since Robert Klaeger left well over a year ago to form his own company. The titles are some¬ what misleading in that Bergmann nominally in charge of the tv division, is actually head of sales, while Whiteseli is in charge of motion picture production—in¬ cluding the making of telefilm. It was explained that the two men are on the same level, with both reporting to Michael Palmer, exec v.p. of Transfilm.