Variety (March 1959)

22 TV-mMS Wednesday, March 4, 1959 PfoRisfr WPK Parlays Blocknight Concept Educ’n & Baseball Into TV Vinner With profits before taxes shouH ing an increase of 122 % for WPIX, N.Y., the indie is sure to stick to! its “blocknight programming” con¬ cept next season.' The 122^6 profit rise was experi¬ enced in the four months, running from October through January, the first four months of the “block¬ night programming” approach. Taken in comparison was the same period the previous year. WPIX, one of the most heavily telefilm programmed station in the country, is non-commercial during midweek daytime hours, up to 5 p.m. That time is devoted to' edu¬ cational tv via a State Board of Regents fund allocation. With the daytime hours devoted to educational tv, and with the sta¬ tion possessing a heavy backlog of telefilms, Fred Thrower, v.p. and general manager, launched the “blocknight programming” concept this season. The concept groups half-hour telefilm series themati¬ cally, i.e. one night of the week de¬ voted to comedy skeins, another night to mystery half-hours, still, another to sports, etc. It’s paid off, with some 55 clients placing orders in a one-month period ended Feb. 26. Station topper Thrower de¬ clined to furnish any further breakdown of his profit picture. Most of the coin on the station is spent on participations, as op¬ posed to program buys. About 98^0 of the station’s coin comes from national accounts and only 2fc from local advertisers. With spring approaching, the N.Y. Daily News outlet is in an enviable position with its Yanks tieup. Again, the sponsors of the games will be B. Ballantine Beer and R. J. Reynolds, via William Estey. Calling the games will be Red Barber, Mel Allen and Phil Rizzuto. Barber also will do the quarter hour pre and post game show of home games, with Bill Stern doing the 15-minute stints on road games. The pre and post game sponsors Include Palmolive and General Mills, with Bardahl ard Hertz Sys¬ tems inking for game adiacencies and I.D.’s. In short, the Yanks are virtually sold out for their season of 123 games, which kicks off with an exhibition contest on March 14. Yanks at this point are the only major ball club slated to hp video¬ cast by a .N.Y. stat ; on. With the Giants and Dodgers moving to Coast berths, WOR-TV last season telecast the Philade’ohia .Phillies and WNTA-TV a number of Na¬ tional League games, many featur¬ ing the Dodgers and Giants. But the heavy interest in the rating charts was retained bv the Yanks. Station, which has about 70 tele¬ film properties, remains in the market for additional skeins. Al¬ ready on its shelves tor next sea¬ son airing are Jayark’s “Bozo the Clown,” strip, “25 Men,” two sea¬ son production on that one with the initial 39 being reruns off WABC-TV; “Air Power,” and “Boots and Saddles.” Morton Exits as Prexy Of TV Film Producers Hollywood, March 3. Maurice Morton has resigned as prexy of the Alliance of Television Film Producers because the job consumed too much of his time, he said here. Morton, who has been prez for the past two-and-a-half years, had six months to go on his present term. The exec board of the Al¬ liance has accepted his resignation, and at the same meeting Morton appointed a nominating committee to nominate candidates for the top spot. Armand Schaeffer of Flying A Productions is chairman of the committee and other members are [ Jack Finletter of MCA-TV and Ed I Rothman of Ziv TV. They will se- ; lect nominees and election of a : new prez will take place at a mem- i bership meeting March 18. Mor- , ton, a v.p. of McCadden Produc- 1 tions, will continue as prexy until 1 then. OFs Tape-to-FiIm Official Films is pulling a switch. It’s picking up a taped show for syndication, but instead of leaving it on tape which has limited dis¬ tribution possibilities today, Of¬ ficial will fiilm the series. Title of the series is “Police Station,” currently on video tape, being telecast on KTLA, Los An¬ geles. It’s a Sandy Howard Produc¬ tions property. Filming of the 39 episodes will start on the Coast today (Wed). ABC Exclusivity On WB’s Product Hollywood, March 3. Warner Bros, has dropped its | plans to sell new telefilm programs. ‘ to CBS and NBC, and will continue | to deal on an exclusive basis with ; ABC-TV for the coming year. Be- i hind the decision, reached with j AB-PT topper Leonard Goldenson last year, lies the fact that the studio currently has about as much in present and future production for ABC as it can handle. Already in work is filming on the new Clint Walker “Cheyennes,” 1 of which there will be only 13 this year, with ABC filling out the cycle of 39 with reruns of Walker’s previous shows. The 13-only sit¬ uation stems from picture commit¬ ments made to Walker by the studio as part of the settlement which effected his return. His first feature is “Yellowstone Kelly,” dne to shoot in May in Yellowstone Park. Beyond this, there’s filming on “The Alaskans,'* already in prog¬ ress on location, plus the current WB roster of “Bronco,” “Sugar- foot”, “Maverick,” “77 Sunset Strip,” “Lawman” and “Colt .45.” Already completed is the “Doc Hol¬ liday” pilot, and upcoming are hew pilots on “Public Enemy”' and “Torrid Zone,” as well as a one- hour “Bourbon Street Beat,” which will be aired as a “77 Sunset Strip” segment. Towers $1, Dickens TV Series London, March 3. Towers of London Ltd. has put into production a skein of 39 vid- pix based on stories from Charles Dickens. Company topper Harry Alan Towers, who recently an¬ nounced plans to do a series on Sir Winston Churchill's “History of The English-Speaking Peoples,” has tied up an Eastern hemisphere deal on this new project with ABC Television and is shooting at the Associated British Picture Corp. studios at Elstree. Towers told Variety that he’s made no commitments yet in the States but proposes to set a deal when he’s got several pilots ready for screening. He expects to travel to America about April 1. Towers stresses that this “Tales From Dickens” setup is not a serial but that each 30-minute vidpic tells a self-contained story, with the emphasis on character rather than plot. First one has James Donald, in the lead, it being “Christmas At Dingley Dell;” sec¬ ond is a Dickens short story “The Runaways” with Athene Seyler and Bobby Howes. Also lined up are Sir Donald Wolfitt, Robert Morley, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Sir Ralph Richardson. Towers is planning to sign an international actor as “continuing host” to the skein. Overall budget is around $1,000,000. Bare Tapped fay MGM-TV Hollywood March 3. Richard L. Bare, who copped the Screen Directors Guild Award for television direction two weeks ago, has been signed by MGM-TV to produce and direct pilot of “You’re Only Young Once,” Dean Jones comedy starrer. Bare succeers Milo Frank Jr., who exited as producer on the project but continues as a Metro staff producer. Bare will double as director on the project, with Metro- TV production chief Richard Mai- baum taking exec producer post on the show. Bare was set by the Frank Copper agency. . BOB CINADER EXITS HAL ROACH STUDIOS Hollywood, March 3. Bob Cinader has resigned as v.p. in charge of programming for Hal Roach i Studios. Cinader was brought’in last July to concentrate on program development, but be¬ cause of the involvement of the studio in the F. L. Jacobs Co. and Scranton Corp. financial tangle, had been unable to proceed with development of new properties, and requested his release. Prior to joining Roach. Cinader was program v.p. of California Na¬ tional Productions, which he joined after a term with the William Morris agency in New York. Composing-for-TV Emerging As New Art Form; Elmer Bernsteins Status 34-City TV Hour’ Spread Another 11 tv stations have bought National Telefilm Asso¬ ciates’ “TV Hour of Stars,” bring¬ ing total sales to 34 markets. New deals include: KLZ, Den¬ ver; KSTP, Minneapolis-St. Paul; WPST, Miami; WCIA, Champaign, Ill.; WAVY. Norfolk; WTVH, Peo¬ ria.' Ill.; WTRI. Albcny, N. Y.; WKYT, Lexington, Ivy.; KNOE, Monroe, La.; KMMT, Airtin, Minn.; and KHOL, Kearney, Neb. Hollywood March 3. Infant of the telefilm industry Is the art of composing for television, and one of the busiest practitioners of the art is Elmer Bernstein, who did the motion picture scores for “Man With the Golden Arm” and “The 10 Commandments,” to name just a pair. Bernstein’s under an exclusive- for-tv pact to Revue Productions and is concentrating major atten¬ tion on “General Electric Theatre,” on which he’s, musical director. He’s also on call for other projects —latest is the scoring of the pilot of “Johnny Staccato,” the new John Cassavetes private-eye-with- jazz entry. The composing-for-tv art is a new one because it was only this season that the musicians unions opened up for real on use of live music in telefilms. Occasionally, for a musical-slated series, there was a per-show contract, but these were the exception. ■ Then came Revue’s precedental blanket deal with the AFM, followed shortly thereafter by Desilu. Bernstein firrds scoring for tv a specialized task, and 'while unwill¬ ing to say whethe ’ it’s tougher than picture scoring, does point out that “when you run across a tough situation on tv, it’s more difficult to solve than a tough picture prob¬ lem.” Basically, the problem of composing for television lies in the fact that it’s primarily a half-hour medium. “In a picture,” Bernstein ob¬ serves, “you have an idea and can expand it, build it and embellisn it for an hour and a half or more. In television, you’ve got 20 minutes and all you can do is state the idea m its simplest terms.” This is com¬ plicated by the fact that in. the half-hour tv show, the script itself is stated simply, and Bernstein has to watch out that his music doesn’t override the script in its more basic moments. Composer, who recently finished the “Some Came Running” score and is currently working on “The Miracle” for Warner Bros., says that television producers working with original music first get so excited over, it as to view it as a toy. He recalls his first piece of music for television—“They had a montage of a train pulling into a station, and I wrote a little under¬ lying music for the scene. They . liked it so much the next week (Continued on page 42) Top 20 National Syndicated Shows (Pulse Top Twenty Syndicated Shows for January, 1959) Compilation of the top 20 syndicated markets in the U.S. is based on 22 basic markets, representing about 16,391,500 tv homes. Pulse, in compiling the list, utilizes a weighted average keyed to the number of sets in each of the 22 markets. The weighted aver- age takes in only the markets in which the program has been tele¬ cast. In order to qualify, a property must be telecast in at least ten of the 22 markets. Total number of the 22 basic markets in¬ cluded in the rating compilation per each series is listed in the brackets. The markets include Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Providence, San Francisco-Oakland,. Seattle - Tacoma, St. Louis and Washington. MCA TV in No Hurry, But Those Par Pix Shekels Keep Pouring In -t Foreign Safe of Par Pix Still 3 Yeirs Off Foreign tv distribution of the Paramount pix will not begin un¬ til another three years. > Under MCA TV’s deals with Paramount,^MCA TV agreed to hold off foreign distribution, which includes .Canada, until four years after the agreement was signed in 1958. MCA TV already has received some foreign overtures for the pix. Other features-to-tv distributors, though, are very active in the for¬ eign market currently. Distribs in the foreign field include National Telefilm Associates, United Artists Television and Screen Gems. Okay Sale of Mex Pk for BA TV Mexico City, March 3. Cimex, the official distributor¬ ship for Mexican films in overseas markets and the United States, has granted necessary authorization to Azteca Films to conclude sale of a lot of 50 motion pictures to U. S. television outlets. Before final terms are okayed Cimex reserves right to review con¬ tract and reject it if it is not found “convenient” However, no hitch in plans is expeetd for it is known Mexico would like to convert into dollars national production any¬ where from three to five years old, and more. J At the same time Cimex is also I going forward with negotiations to! sell another lot of 15 films to Eu- i rope, with distribution to be out¬ side of the Cimex organization which has subsidiaries in France (Cimex-France), Italy, etc. Only stipulation is that rights of Cimex- France must be respected and those interested in distributing Mexican films abroad must deal i with this subsidiary. Meanwhile, Televicentro, the telecasting headquarters in this city, has announced the purchase of 34 CBS educational and cul¬ tural shorts for a reported $20,000, with these covering history, sociol¬ ogy, customs and dances in tlje U. S. MCA TV, with its methodical sale of the Paramount pix, may be slower than other distribs In the biz, but its approach probably is getting MCA TV top dollar. MCA TV has passed the $52,000 - 000 gross mark. Library is sold in about 32 markets, with another eight deals., under wraps, waiting for the station announcement gre enlig ht Latest to ink are WMTW-TV, Portland-Mt. Washing¬ ton, <Me.; WBNS, Columbia, O.; KFJZ, Ft Worth-Dallas; WTVJ, Miami Unlike other distribs, MCA TV came into the market having time as its ally. The pre-’48 Hollywood feature attrition is progressing with time, making the last of the libraries, the Paramount pix, more attractive. Other distribs came into the market, either fighting one backlog against another, or with future backlogs yet to be released. Holding up a quick saturation of the library is MCA TV’s method of selling the pix. At certain intervals, different markets in the U. S. are opened up for a deal, with MCA TV giving notice of that situation via a letter and statement to each sta¬ tion in the particular market. The statement lists the price and run. of each individual pic, with the deal going to the station which first meets, or comes closest to, the quoted prices. Another factor mitigating against any fast sellout is that MCA TV only has three execs actively en¬ gaged in selling the pics. They are Lou Friedland, vja., headquarter¬ ing in N. Y.; Dearv Barton, v.p. (Continued on page 42) AUDREY MEADOWS AS CAESAR CO-STAR Audrey Meadows will be co- starred with Sid Gaesar in his tele¬ film series for Screen Gems. Once a script is fcompleted, SG will go mto immediate production on a half-hour pilot for the Caesar- Meadows skein. Pilot will be shown this spring as an episode in the Screen Gems- produced “Alcoa-Goodyear” stanza on NBC-TV. Miss Meadows’ co- starring status was dickered with SG and Caesar by Val Irying, her manager, and lawyer Mortimer Becker. Mel Tolkin and Mel Brooks will probably co-author the pilot script of the situation comedy to be built about the two fionters.