Variety (March 1959)

RADIO-TELEVISION MCA’s Social Security-Asks Sponsors To Grow Old (65 Wks.) With‘Father’ While the firm 52-week commit¬ ment is not unheard of with the hotter television properties, MCA- TV with its “Bachelor Father” skein is pushing for an unusual 65-week pact with two bankrolled. “Father,” alternating with the Jack Benny show on CBS-TV Sun¬ day nights, is set to shift over to NBC Thursday, at 9 slot next sea¬ son. American Tobacco, which bankrolls the program, has placed an alternate-week order . for the show when it becomes a weekly en¬ try instead of a skip-week offering. The second bankroller lined up is Whitehall which has been balk¬ ing at the terms. MCA is demand¬ ing that both sponsors ink for 15 repeats starting on June 13, 33 fresh episodes and then another series of summer repeats. So far, Whitehall, handled out of Ted Bates, is only interested in signing for 13 weeks with options. WNBQ Chimes in With *Me, Too’ on Lar Daly Chicago, March 17. ' WNBQ, the NBC-TV station, has joined the other two network anchors here in taking a firm stand on the sanctity of news as regards Section 315 (a), the “equal time” statute of the Com¬ munications Act. | When the Federal Communica¬ tions Commission upheld mayoral¬ ty candidate Lar Daly's demands ! for equal time in newscasts sev¬ eral weeks ago, only WNBQ com¬ plied. CBS News, - on the other hand, announced it was contest- . ing the decision and would con- : tinue to report legitimate news cn tv, Lar Daly or no Lar Daly. ABC quickly followed suit, and i recently NBC did too. UfiSHETY AM-TV AGGIE NEWS REAPING A HARVEST Washington, March 17. New Agriculture Dept, survey reports more radio and television stations than ever before are broadcasting farm market news. Department’s agriculture mar¬ keting service said, questionnaires were sent to 3,784 stations of these, 749o of AM outlets replyng said they earried market news reg¬ ularly, while 165 of 367 tv stations said they did. Similar surveys have been con¬ ducted every year or two for 37 Detroit—Bob Martin, 18 years a disk jockey and once Stan Kenton’s manager, was signed recently as member of WXYZ radio lineuD. He’s taken over station’s noon-to- 3 p.m. strip, replacing Mickey Shorr who, in turn, has taken over the 3-6 anchorage replacing Ed 'Wednesday, March 18, 1959 Longhairs Coming Out of Haydn To Rack Up a Score or Two on TV By JO RANSON Earnest, non-trifling long-and- medium-hair composers are finally getting a fair shake from the webs. Both CBS-TV and NBC-TV, nota¬ bly the former, are commissioning the high-C boys to do major back¬ ground scores for pubservice and other special programs. Nor is the dough described as chicken-feed among the lads who provide backgrounding e-flats. CBS-TV reportedly pays $1,500 for each score for a 30-minute program in the “Twentieth Century” series. Once regarded as a hack’s as¬ signment, background music on video lanes is now a major league assignment judging by the lineup of talent recently signed by the major webs. . The list Includes such toppers as Darius Milhaud, George Kleinsinger, Harold Sha- It shouldn't happen to a And yof H does! It happens to the best of us r time and time again. We lavish core and money on original footage to get them just right-only to have, prints turn up that are way off broadcast specifications. The answer^*—give your labora¬ tory time and money to do the job right! Then alt your release prints will be on the be^m 100%. For further information write: Motion Picture Film Department EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY Rochester 4, N.Y. East Coast Division 342 Madison Avenue New York : 7, N.Y. Midwest Division ! 30 East Randolph Drive Chicago 1, III. West Coast Division 6706 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, Calif. W..J. German, Inc. Agents far the. sale and distribution of Always shoot it on EASTMAN FILM... You’ll be glad you did! pero, Alan Hovhaness, Gail Kubik, Paul Creston,. Ulysses Kay. George Antheil, who died recently, also did background scores for video. Currently here for a powwow on l an original score is French com- - poser George Auric. It will be a 1 tv musical score (his first) for “Stalingrad,” based on Russian- ; German films which CBS-TV will , present in the “Twentieth Cen-' tury” series April 19. Burton Ben- i jamin will script and. produce this j particular episode, with Isaac Kleinerman as associate producer. April 19th show will be the final one of season with the.new series | scheduled in the fall. \ “Twentieth Century” also signed , Kubik, highly-touted young Ameri- can composer, to do an original score for “The Silent Sentinel” on [ March 22. March 29th production, , “The Times of Teddy Roosevelt” will- have an original score by Kleinsinger. He’ll also do the mu¬ sical assignment for “From Kaiser to Fuehrer,” story of the Weimar Republic on April 5. Kay, gifted young Negro composer and fre¬ quently described as a creative art¬ ist closest to the Gershwin ap¬ proach, was signed to do the back¬ ground music for “Submarine,” storv of underwater craft, on April 12. Alfredo Antoninl conducts all scores with the 25-piece CBS Or¬ chestra and special recordings are [made of all music compositions, these in many instances serving as audition records for the use of the composers. To date Columbia Rec¬ ords and other companies have evinced more than academic inter¬ est in waxing video background music as full-blown long-playing al¬ bums for commercial distribution. These and other residuals are available to longhair composers writing for tv. • “Twentieth Cen¬ tury’s” production staff notes that IOC o of the series’ budget is for music-original music, orchestral costs, etc. ' In the NBC-TV environs, Robert Russell Bennett this week was en¬ gaged to do an original.score for up¬ coming “Project 20” production on Mark Twain. Also earning tidy sums from 30 Rock for similar work was Ralph Burns,, who composed tha original score for “The Great Leap Forward,” NBC News documentary on Red China telecast recently. Jacques Belasco, who wrote music for radio series “Greatest Story Ever Told,” also did original music for NBC-TV’s “Catholic Hour” four-part film series, “Rome Eter¬ nal” last year. NBC-TV also hired Kenyon Hopkins and aforemen¬ tioned Hovhaness to dish up origi¬ nal tv music scores. And then there’s Larry Adler (being held over for 10 more weeks at the Village Gate, N. Y.) who headlined a 90-minute harmonica concert' over WNTA-TV Monday fl6>. He played the works of Bach, Gershwin, Enesco, Jacobs and other major composers. Pro¬ gram, in a measure was an out¬ growth of the performance he gave on WCBS-TV’s “Camera Three” re¬ cently. It’s po ; nted out that a 30-minute tv score is about the size of a sym¬ phony but pays much better and that'video’s Bachs and Haydns as¬ suredly enjoy placing footsie with the 21-inch sight-sound contrap¬ tion. S. Cal. Dodge Deal For 200G to KLAC Racked Hollywood, March 17. A contract budgeted “in excess of $200,000,” plus an additional $200,000 for advertising and pro¬ motion has been signed between the Dodge Dealers Assn, of South¬ ern California and KLAC. Pact calls for 10 consecutive hours of exclusive sponsorship by Dodge each Sunday for 52 weeks, com¬ mencing March, 29. Four promotions of 13 weeks apiece are planned for the unpre¬ cedented Dodge campaign, accord¬ ing to Joe A. Denker, account exec of Grant Advertising, which reps the Dodge Dealers. Initial 13-week period will feature a special “Go Places with Dodge” contest, fea¬ turing a grand prize of a holiday anywhere in the world for two via PanAm.