Variety (February 1959)

TV-FILMS 43 W- edneaday, February 4, 1959 1^&RU£TY The Battle For The Tape Buck McMahan Indicts Infant’ Status Of Uil Blurb-Makers Harry Wayne McMahan, a vet¬ eran in the blurb-making business, has recently returned from Europe, armed with what he considers are topflight European-made film com¬ mercials and simultaneously with an indictment of American blurbs and blurb-makers. After lauding “the more ingeni¬ ous concepts," “the sophistication" and the “memorable” qualities of so much of. the foreign stuff he saw recently as the only American judge at the Venice fete, he ac¬ cused Americans of falling down on the. job of selling via tv. Mc¬ Mahan, these days a consultant and a former veepee in charge of video blurbs at Leo Burnett, said these things to Variety, shortly before reiterating many of the same opin¬ ions before a group of agency and production execs who viewed 40 European commercials at a presen¬ tation sponsored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Gotham chapter. “The Continent is way. Way ahead of us in making the creative advertising message,” he declared. “American agencies are not us¬ ing our creative film producers enough,” McMahan charged. “While agency interest in improv¬ ing tv commercials is increasing, the advertising men must be cau¬ tioned that fewer of them than now do should get into the act” The former Venice judge said that the great number of Madison Avenuers who get themselves in on all phases of commercial pro¬ duction tend to dissipate the blurbs* impact. Actual producers, he said, “who know how -to tell a story, are being overlooked.” “There are just too many people at the agencies involved in dotting the *i\ They don’t get the con¬ tract producer in there soon enough to help them out.” He pointed out that American. still commercial photography is quite far advanced, as. opposed to most tv film commercials, simply because the admen let professional shutterbugs alone to do the work they know best European — meaning French, Swiss, English, et aL—commercial- makers “are better at visual con¬ cepts,” according to McMahan. “They are able to tell the story without all the’ words we use.” Twenty-two of the blurbs McMahan brought back' with him use hardly- any words at all, except, in some cases, at the dose of the com¬ mercial. -■ McMahan said that the absence of vocalistics in foreign-made ma¬ terial is due by and large to-the fact that many sponsors have to communicate in ’ many languages and hence "try to tell the story in a picture that most always is more ■ memorable than words.” “Moreover* I believe that many advertising people here, after see¬ ing these prints, would agree that these are more successful at sell-, ing impact than the run of our commercials.” Impulse’ Added To G-K Roster Hollywood, Feb. 3. * Second Gross - Rrasne series slated for filming at the company’s California Studios this year is “Impulse,” show created by actress Maria Palmer and dealing with the motivations for acts of crime. Se¬ ries will be distributed by Gross- Krasne^Sillerman, K-G’s distribu¬ tion affiliate. For past couple of years, G-K has confined production activities to overseas, despite the fact that they own the leasehold and oper¬ ate the California lot. First do¬ mestic series, “Fate,” is slated to roll $hortly for G-K-S syndication. Jack Gross will probably produce both series, with “Impulse” rolling in early spring. Miss Palmer,- whose latest stint was featured role in national com¬ pany of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” has the cooperation of the American Psychiatric Society and* the L. A. Police Dept, in the ven¬ ture. She’s already done a couple of scripts for the series. By ART WOODSTONE Role telefilm commercial pro* ducers'will play in video tape pro¬ duction is not clear—even to the production companies. Beset by union, budgetary and facility prob¬ lems and the sudden upsurge of network interest in competing for the video tape dollar, the situation has become difficult for the mem¬ bers of the Film Producers Assn, of N. Y. and for their Coast coun¬ terparts. . Advertising agencies are show¬ ing extreme timidity in throwing what limited, tape blurb produc¬ tion there is to the film producers. Instead, they reportedly are turn¬ ing to CBS-TV and NBC-TV, which are absolved at least of the facil¬ ities and most of the union problems. Working rapidly, FPA says that it is on the way to solving one of the more pressing issues. Its rep¬ resentatives met last week to iron out differences with the Inter¬ national Alliance of Theatrical & Stage Employees. FPA said that the union understands the prob¬ lems and the two groups will meet again next Friday (6) in a further shot at straightening the diffi¬ culties that have become apparent in the past several months and which came to a head two weeks ago in an intra-union jurisdictional squabble. CBS and NBC have accelerated plans of their own to get into full- scale production, to take advan¬ tage of the indecision forced upon the film men. The intra-union IATSE situation, really nothing more than a peculiar symptom of the overall issue between the film producers and the IA, is said to have in part influenced NBC to jettison its cautions about starting fulltime in tape and instead to make immediate plans for a pro¬ duction centre devoted entirely to Max Cooper to Tape Caban Baseball League For U. S. Winter Ride Chicago, Feb. 3. Max Cooper’s big idea for tele-, vision depends on whether Fidel Castro can make Cuba safe for winter baseball in 1959. Cooper, wjw heads a Chicago public rela¬ tions firm, has purchased the rights from the Cuban Baseball League to televise next winter’s games in the U.S. by means of videotape. It’s Cooper’s belief that baseball buffs don’t tire of the sport when the U.S. season ends but instead begin speculating on the forthcom¬ ing year. With six major league ballplayers allotted to each Cuban club in addition to a number of topflight minor league prospects. Cooper feels the south-of-the- border games will be watched with as much interest here as the in- season stateside games. Immediately as the 1959 ,U.S. baseball season ends. Cooper is go¬ ing into production with a 26-week series of Cuban baseball to span the gap between the end of one gringo baseball season and the be¬ ginning of the nfcxt. Last one in the skein, 'but natch, will be the championship game. The schedule is for one a week. Cooper says he has devised a technique for editing tape in film fashion by which each game could be pared to an hour’s length al¬ most without eliminating a pitch. This is done by snipping out [the unnecessary incidents that tend to slow down a ball game—staring contests^ walks to ~ the dugout, changes of field, etc. A pilot tape of a complete game played in Cuba this season is cur¬ rently making the rounds of net¬ works and ad agencies. Failing to get a network bite for the series. Cooper says he will put it into syn¬ dication. A1 Heifer did the play-by- play on the pilot. Working title of the 'taped ball- casts is “Winter TV Baseball.”] Fact that the U.S. gazettes don’t cover the individual Caban Leagues games, Cooper feels, keeps a Mon-] day or Tuesday outing fresh in tills country when it is played back on‘ tape the following Saturday. Although-his business is public relations primarily. Cooper had produced a local tv-er with How¬ ard Miller several years back j tape production (see separate story). Film producers are bothered by problems; of which IATSE is only a part, of such variety and range that one producer expressed them as “maybe insoluble.” Most of the FPA producers tabulated don’t share that opinion, feeling that in time everything will work out, but at the same time, some of them are cognizant that they cannot con¬ sume too much time establishing jointly with IA a tape modus oper¬ and!, for fear that NBC and CBS will become too well entrenched in the field. First there are the union prob¬ lems, with IATSE and its various parts and with SAG and AFTRA. While FPA feels it can come to terms with the IA. the SAG-AFTRA jurisdictional dispute, which seems to strike more directly at the film producers than it ever has at the networks, still faces a series of. legal maneuvers over an indeter¬ minable period of time. There are for the film producers, too, the problems of sufficient fi¬ nancing to buy tape studio space, tape equipment, live camera chains, and, perhaps most important, the unresolved need to establish a crystal-clear method of perform¬ ance ns video tape producers. Tape is a mechanical method far more resembling live production tech¬ nique than the film methods pro¬ ducers are used to. It is this latter problem that has created—far more than any minor intra-IA squabbling—the issues that FPA and IATSE are now trying to solve. Two weeks ago, the intra-IA mat¬ ter cropped up and it is said to have increased agency indecision about the use of the FPA in tape blurb-making. Actually, it was a narrow issue, which, while it is taken as symptomatic of the over¬ all trouble between IA and FPA, Plot to Kill Fuller One of the pass-this-around- the-table-takeoffs-at a Savoy- Hilton Hotel (N. Y.) luncheon last week was a photograph based on “The Plot to Kill Stalin” given tiis season by “Playhouse 90.” The feed was in tribute to Robert; Fuller, leaving WCBS-TV to become publicity director of CBS Films. Hotel's bulletin board listed the event as given by— WABC-TV. IMPOSING ARRAY OF ‘SA 7’CLIENT BUYS Despite the growth of syndica¬ tion advertisers seeking participa¬ tions as opposed to program buys, there remains a wide array of ad¬ vertisers going along the tradi¬ tional route. Case in point is MCA TV's sales lineup on “SA 7." On top of the regionals of Lucky Strike Cigarets and Genesee Brewing, MCA TV has clicked. off 16 additional mar¬ kets for a variety of sponsors. New sales include Tareyton Cigarets for 10 markets and Donovan Coffee for two Alabama markets. Other buys include Ballantine Beer, Columbus, O.; Dixie Electric for one market in Louisiana and Blue Plate Foods for another Louisiana'market. Each of the sales was for a February start. Success Story Hollywood, Feb. 3. Four Star Films will pour over $800,000 into 20 half-hour telefilms for seven series during the next three weeks, a record activity pace for the Hollywood telefilmery, ac¬ cording to production head Frank Baur. Included in the production activity is lensing of the first stanza of Four Star's new Singer anthol¬ ogy series Feb. 16. Series is hosted by David Niven, produced by Vin¬ cent M. Fennelly. Other telepix to be filmed in the three-week period are three for “Rifleman”; three for “Dick Pow¬ ell’s Zane Grey Theatre”; four for “Wanted—Dead or Alive”; three for “Trackdown”; three for “Black Saddle”; and three for “Richard Diamond, Private Detective.” did not offer any genuine cause for ad agency alarm. Instead of the usual one, there were two pro¬ ducers involved, one from FPA (which is signed with IA local 6441 and one (dealing only with IA men employed by two N.Y. tv stations and Who are not 644 members). This two-ply production deal caused the problem by and large. Bigger IA problem Involves the guarantees the FPA producers feel they can afford or cannot afford to make to the union as to the staff¬ ing and training of crews. The cur¬ rent meetings are basically on these points. FPA appears to want the union to train its film techni¬ cians in the live manner and also wants the right to pick from the trainees the men FPA members feel are most qualified to make the shift from film to live. (It’s much more than merely training them to use cameras effectively; it is, ac¬ cording to some FPA’ers, a matter of training them in the more in¬ volved techniques of live camera maintenance.) IATSE naturally wants FPA to first hire permanent staffs with the producers then undertaking the re¬ sponsibility of training. Because nobody on either side really can foretell the extent and monetary worth of video tape production and because few of the FPA producers want to underwrite costly tape facilities additions before tape really gets moving, the IA and FPA are confronted by serious problems. CBS and NBC are signed with IBEW and NABET, respectively, and since there is neither any dis¬ pute as to which union is to handle the various network tape jobs noi is there any problem of converting film technicians to live work (NABET and IBEW are historically “live tv” unions), the webs are thought to have the edge for the moment in this battle for the tape buck. “Yankee Doodle Dandy’s’ Star-Spangled Trendex In Providence, Elsewhere “Yankee Doodle Dandy” is turn¬ ing the rating tables on the posi¬ tion that old-time musical features don’t ring the rating register in their tv exposure. WJAR-TV, Providence. R.I., which plugged heavily for the Warner Bros, pic, starring James Cagney, scored ? whopping 42.5 Trendex oh Tues. (27), between 8 and 10 p.m. The hoopla paid off hand¬ somely for the sole sponsor Sun¬ beam Bread, which plunked down about $5,000 for the one-shot pres¬ entation, the figure including the advertisers share in promotion: Other ratings elsewhere are not nearly as dramatic, hut they do in¬ dicate the musical’s strength. Ac¬ cording to the Variety-PuIs e Fea¬ ture Chart in this issue, the ’42 cinematic being distributed by United Artists Associates, scored second place in the Chicago mar¬ ket with a 18.1, and a 17.0 in Co¬ lumbus, O., again hitting second place. KTTV GRABS OFF KELLOGG BILLINGS Hollywood, Feb. 3. KTTV pulled a nifty mid-year coup last week by grabbing off some $3,000 a week worth of Kel¬ logg billings which had been riding on KABC-TV; the ABC o&o here, since the start of the season. KTTV pulled away three of Kellogg’s big four spot-booked shows, “Woody Woodpecker,” “Superman” and “Wild Bill Hickok,” which KABC- TV was awarded when Kellogg de¬ cided to go spot after having aired the shows on the ABOTV network. In addition, KTTV grabbed some extra business, with Kellogg ink¬ ing to sponsor “Topper” on the station as well. Shift from KABC- TV starts Dec. 22, when “Woody” goes into a Sunday at 6 slot; "Su¬ perman” and “Hickok” go into Wednesday and Thursday at 7 the same week, and “Topper” rides Saturday afternoons. Scranton Corp. In Payroll Crisis At Roach Studios Hollywood, Feb. 3. Bloom may be off the rose ot the Scranton Corp.’s wide-ranging show biz plans. A temporary crisis last week at Hal Roach Studios, one of the Scranton subsids, was the tipoff, as the studio for some time was unsure whether it would he able to meet its payroll. As it turned out, the payroll was met, and will be met next week, but nobody could predict anything be¬ yond that. Payment for production person¬ nel was slated for last Thursday (29), and by that afternoon Roach execs were phoning the unions ask¬ ing them for wage waivers, for permission to delay wage payments by one week. They told the unions that money had been held up in .New York, due to a shortterm fi¬ nancial squeeze that would shortly be overcome. Late that afternoon, word arrived from New York that money wou’d be forth¬ coming, and Friday afternoon everyone was paid off. Whatever the nature of the squee?e on Scranton’s resources— and Hal Roach Jr. was the only studio exec with any knowledge of the problem, and he was in New York raising the coin—fact remains there’s grave speculation over the studio’s future here, as well as con¬ siderable wonderment as to the di¬ rection in which Scranton’s mov¬ ing. The financial squeeze was pre¬ ceded by rapid expansion, what with acquisition of Mutual, of Dis¬ tributors Corp. of America, of Roach’s Rabco assets, along with talk of acquisition of a telefilm dis¬ tribution firm. There were also income, from Roach’s sale for $2,- 000,000 of ’the “Oh Susannah” se¬ ries to Jack Wrather’s Independent Television Corp. At the same time, though, there came the William Morris agency lawsuit for $311,000 in comm'ssions allegedly due on sale of the “Su¬ sannah” show, along with reports that operating funds at the studio have been chronically low for the past several weeks. Roach execs explained that operating funds for payroll, etc., aiv forwarded from New York each week. Nobody knows the future of the studio, but bets are that Scranton will curtail its expansion-acquisi¬ tion program sharply to reappraise its show biz investments. Mean¬ while, studio is operating as usual. “Susannah” is the *how cur¬ rently shooting; “The Veil” has laid off for a couple of weeks; pilot of the Guy Madison show is in the cuttingrooms. “Dennis O’Keefe Show,” which is a rental, is slated to start within the next week for United Artists Television Fremantle Inti Into Yidpic Prod. London, Feb. 3. Fremantle International~of New York is entering the vidpic pro¬ duction field for the first time with a series to be lensed in Britain. Details wers disclosed last week by the company prexy, Paul Talbot, during a stopover in London as part of an extensive continental tour. The series will star Harry H. Corbett, who is best known here for his “Sooty” puppet character, which has been widely featured on British tv. The skein will be partly puppet and partly live action and the pilot is now in an advanced stage of preparation. The series will run to 39 half-hour films. During his London visit, Talbot also announced the appointment of Douglas Jackson as Fremantle** UK sales manager. Jackson was formerly with the George Newnes publishing house in charge of the sales promotion department and in that capacity produced a num¬ ber of tv commercials. Angela Cuthbertson, who is a director of Talbot Television Ltd. (the British subsidiary), continues to handle the I sales of Fremantle films on the continent, operating out of the I London office.