Variety (December 1960)

■AVIO-TELE VISION P*2ntlEFi Wednefdijr, December 7, 1960 BBDO Shares New Client Financing For Scheduled Jane Powell Series -On Other Madison Ave. Fronts By BILL GREELEY . <| BBDO has another client-fi¬ nanced show in the hopper for net¬ work ailing next fall. This one is only half wrapped up, but it fol¬ lows the line of Rexall’s “National Velvet,’’ currently on NBC-TV, and General Mill's “Father of the Bride" with a ' client-bankrolled pilot being produced by MGM. An undisclosed BBDO client will bankroll alternate weeks of a Jane Powell half-hour situation comedy come fall if a network slot can be negotiated after Four Star pro¬ duces the pilot. Agency’s program chief George Polk hopes to line up another BBDO account to share in financing and sponsorship. Production talent is still being negotiated, but the format is set and will include song and dance turns by Miss Powell along with the eomedv narrative. In addition, the client already lined up is blueprinting an hour snecial featuring Miss Powell for April network airing. Yock Insurance Goodson-Todman. masters of the tele auiz who have often conducted year-long dry runs before airing one of their live shows, are carry¬ ing the technique of pretesting over to one of their new film prop¬ erties. “One Happy Family,” G-T situa¬ tion comedy scheduled for NBC-TV preem Jan. 13, is having each stanza pre-tested before ' a live audience several days before the cameras roll. Company’s exec veepee on the Coast, Harris Katleman, says the plan will add $2,000 to the weekly budget, “but we feel that the qual¬ ity of the finished product will justify the expenditure. It’s our belief that everyone—sponsors, the network and the general public— will benefit from this concept. “If this plan works out, and I’m convinced it will, then other shows are bound to follow suit. The idea has natural appeal for advertising agencies and clients whose think¬ ing is geared to pre-testing prod¬ ucts before marketing them.” “One Hanpy Family” is jointly owned by G-T and director A1 Lewis and producer Sid Dorman. The production men will be re¬ sponsible for the rewriting of any¬ thing that bombs before the live audiences. Up and down: As expected, Thomas A. MeAvity, former NBC- TV programming exec and Mc- Cann-Erickson Productions senior veepee, has been named head of programming and a veepee of the J. Walter Thompson radio-tv de¬ partment. He replaces Dan Sey¬ mour, director of the radio-tv ■ department. who was recently made a member of the agency’s executive committee. Leonard V. Colson, former veepee of Pharmacraft Laboratories, divi¬ sion of Seagram, has been named director of marketing for the J. B. W’illiams Co. toiletries division. Sam Fleishman, formerly with NTA and Screen Gems, has joined Advertising, Radio & Television Services’ Gerald Productions as a veepee and general manager. Henry G. Orthman, formerly with Doherty, Clifford. Steers & Shenfield, has joined the account staff of J. M. Mathes. Arnold Bakers of Port Chester, N.Y., has switched from Kudner agency to Donahue & Coe. Firm, which distributes up and down the Atlantic coast, billed more than $150,000 in spot tv last year. London Agencies Smee’s Advertising Ltd. ap- ponted to handle the account of Suntester, British subsidiary of the Sun Electric corp. of America. . . . Handling U.K. and European ad¬ vertising for the Jamaica Tourist Board is Robert Brandon & Part¬ ners Ltd. . . . Newspaper Society Is to interview 10,000 housewives in England and Wales for a just- started readership and markets survey intended to provide upto- <Jate info on the coverage of the local and national press, plus tele¬ viewing and cinemagoing habits, inter alia. Storer Broadcasting will drop the tv representation of its five tv stations and establish company sales offices in New York and Chi¬ cago. Operations will begin July 1, ’61. Four of the Storer stations are repped by Katz Agency. They are WJBK, Detroit; WJW, Cleveland; WAGA, Atlanta; and WSPD, Tol¬ edo. Fifth station, WITI, Milwau¬ kee, was repped by the Blair group when Storer took it over about a year and a half ago, and the rep contract has been continued. The seven Storer radio stations will continue with their current reps—five with Katz, one with Blair and one with Peters, Griffin & Woodward. The new national spot sales or¬ ganisation (which will be incorpo¬ rated into a separate company at a later date) will\be headed by Peter Storer, currently managing director of WSPD, Toledo. As gen¬ eral manager, he’ll supervise a staff of 10 salesmen and’research, promotion and other departments. Chicago staff will consist of five salesmen and an office manager to be named. \ Peter Storer, son of -George B. Storer Sr., company chairman and prexy, has headed sales for the Cleveland station, WJW, worked in the company’s New York sales office and was with CBS Radio spot sales. Television Advertising Repre¬ sentatives midwest sales manager Lamont Thompson gave the Can¬ ton, O., Advertising Club a' hard¬ sell pitch on broadcast softsell at a club luncheon last week. The corporate image, of an ad¬ vertiser can be improved dramati¬ cally and immediately be a pro¬ gram of community service activi¬ ties, Thompson said, “but the nu¬ cleus of such a blueprint must be a radio or television show. You can’t hang your hat on a printed editorial masterpiece, but you can hang it in the Mayor’s office if you sponsor a community uplift series. Public service shows -are the easiest kind to promote and are priced realistically. “When you are underwriting the show business debut of your town’s leading citizens, you should be there to guarantee that the com¬ mercial Tubs off on them. This is one of the biggest plusses of local public service sponsorship. Mak¬ ing community service an annual corporate image but helps sell the product, gets your salesmen in to see busy buyers, builds stockholder goodwill, helps attract capital and good employee talent, creates con¬ fidence in your product or your services, makes a community wel¬ come your plant or office as it would a good neighbor, and pro¬ vides advantageous distribution for products.” Briefs: Adam Young Television has racked up two more stations, the Morgan Murphy properties WLUK-TV, Green Bay, Wis., and WLUC-TV, Marquette, Mich. Both were with the Hollingbery reppery . . . More than 20,500,000 home, portable, clock and car radios will be sold by the end of this year, says the Radio Advertising Bureau . . . Avery-Knodel has a new study on the mid-Missouri tele market between St. Louis arid Kansas City. No Turkey Dish? Chicago, Dec. 6. One of the most ingenious two-way promotions In a long while is the 24-page cook booklet, “Francois Pope’s ABC-TV Gourmet Recipes,” published by WBKB here and offered free-for-the-asking to viewers of the station. Each of 14 recipes is dedicated to a different ABC-TV series, and at same time the booklet is a promotion for author Pope’s localer, “Creative Cookery,” which currently is rounding out a decade on Windy City daytime tv. Ostensibly Pope’s dishes are inspired by the ABC shows. Winston Churchill series, for instance, brings on the recipe for London Fish Pie; “The Islanders” for Sukiyaki; “Stagecoach West” for Potted Ox Joints; “Harrigan & Son” Irish Lamb Stew; “Hong Kong” Beef Mandarin Style; “My Three Sons” Meat Loaf; and “Naked City” New York Cream Cheese Cake. The Big Combine In Merchandising Merger of three major merchan¬ dising outfits, completed this week, has resulted in the formation of the Licensing Corporation of America. Firms, that went into making this firm are Jay Emmett Associates Inc.; Stone Merchandis¬ ing Associates and Syd Rubin En¬ terprises Inc. The new company will handles such diversified mer¬ chandising projects as the rights to “Dobie Gillis,” “Hennessey,” “Su¬ perman,” “Howdy Doody,” “Real McCoys,” “GE Bowl Quiz,” “The Rebel’’ and other video shows. In the publishing field, they’ll rep American Heritage Magazine Book of Knowledge, Random House and Golden Press. Film properties include “Ben Hur” and “Pepe,” and “The Sound of Music” is on their catalog from the musical comedy field. They also have the merchandising rights to the Diners Club, and personali¬ ties including Pat Boone, Brigitte Bardot, Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme, Carol Heiss, Hayes Allen Jenkins, Jackie Robinson, Floyd Patterson, Sam Levenson and others. LCA officers are Jay Emmett, board chairman; Allan Stone, pres¬ ident; Syd Rubin, veepee, and Leon Newman, secretary treasurer. $D Y CHANNEL FOR \ ROCHESTER, SYRACUSE | Washington, Dec. 6. ,Federal Communications Com- : mission has proposed adding third ! VHF channels to Syracuse and Rochester, N.Y. The rulemaking jwas made possible by negotiations I with Canada on conflicting assign- j ments. Syracuse would get Channel 9 | and Rochester Channel IS under j the rulemaking. Also involved I would be the shift of Channel 5 I from Rochester to Syracuse and ; Channel 8 from Syracuse to ■ Rochester. Comments on the pro- . posals are due Jan. 6. Among proposals rejected by FCC was one by ABC which would delete Channel B from Syracuse and add Channels 9 and 11 to tfiat city. FCC said Canada was not will¬ ing to accept these changes. MCA Folds Pitt Office Pittsburgh, Dec. 6. Music Corp. of America is clos¬ ing its tv sales office here which is the last step in shuttering the I big office it established here five ; years ago. J At one time, it had a cafe and i club date department along with a ! tv salesman. George Claire and I Bill Connelly ran the office and j Connelly stayed on when it was re¬ duced to tv only. Arnold Feisher has been running .the office since Connelly moved over to Screen Gems. Feisher’s new assignment will be assistant editor of Revue on the Coast. Gabe Changes Oil The ways are well greased for j Gabe Pressman. The WNBC-TV i newscaster loses the sponsorship of ; Shell Oil at the end of the month for his 10-minute Saturday night stanza, Sun Oil moves in the fol¬ lowing week. Sun’s buyup of Pressman’s 7- 7:10 p.m. slot is backed up by the continuation of Buitoni as un- j derwriter of the 7:10 to 7:15. p.m. | weathercast on the N. Y. station by ■Frank Fields and Beverly Bentley. ! And beginning Dec. 17, Tom ; Wise, financial, writer, will do a ! five-minute (7:15-7:29) “Financial j News” segment. This portion of the ! WNBC-TV Saturday night lineup is ' as yet unsponsored. Winding up this Saturday evening service by the NBC; owned & operated station is Bill Ryan with 10 minutes of national arid international news, with network programming taking over 7:30 p.m. TV-Radio Production Centres : ♦ » + »♦♦♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ > 44 4 4 ♦ ♦♦ ♦ 4 ♦ I 4 III 4 * ’ IN NEW YORK CITY • . • John Ettlinger, prexy of Medallion TV Enterprises, planed in from the Coast for tape screenings of the Curt Massey show, KRCA strip in Los Angeles which Medallion handles for syndication . . , CBS News prexy Sig Mickelson addressed the 37th annual congress of the Ameri¬ can Municipal Assn, in N. Y. last week, urging municipal officials to make better use of their local tv stations to achieve greater public awareness of community issues and objectives . . . Ralph H. Daniels Jr. transfers from the San Francisco office of CBS Television Spot Sales into Gotham as an account exec . . . Ed Sullivan serving as na¬ tional campaign cifairman for the ’60-’61 fundraising drive of the Arthritis & Rheumatism Foundation . . . Peter Falk, who played Abe Reles in “Murder Inc.,” Burt Balaban’s pic, plays the same role again on “The Witness” Thursday (15) . . . Stan Walker, flack with the Kal- mus Co., doing .a radio-tv column for the Long Island Examiner, new weekly in the Hempstead area . . . David L. Miller Jr., former sales manager of WHK, Cleveland, joined WNEW as mid western sales rep . . . Richard Joseph, Esquire travel editor, doing a series of travel shorties for CBS Radio’s “Dimension” library . . . CBS News has upped Dan Bloom to the hew post of managing editor, radio, and upped John Merriman from night editor in radio to producership of “The World Tonight," Bloom’s old spot. Other promotions include Marian Gliok, upped from news writer to night editor; transfer of Ron Tighe from tv news to radio, and replacement of Tighe as a tv editor by Hal Han¬ ley; and addition of John Patterson, ex-news director of WDBJ, Roa¬ noke, as a news writer. Benny Friedman back in broadcasting action this past Sunday, doing the Colts-Lions pro grid game with Lindsay Nelson for NBC-TV. It’ll probably be the. same teamup if the playoff game is held in Fhilly. Joe Culligan, McCann-Erickson general corporate exec, has been named a trustee of the .Child Guidance Foundation, organization concerned with-juve delinquency and mental disorders . . . It’s a boy for the David Surecks. (She’s ex-NBC; he’s with UN Radio). ABC press chief Mike Foster and frau off for a fortnight of rest in Montego Bay . . . Roger Gimbel, who masterminded the ebneept and details of NBC-TV’s Turkey Day special, “No Place Like Home,” was inadyertently omitted from the credits of the. review given the show . . . Gwen Van Dam has a running role in CBS-TV’s “From These Roots” from Dec. 15 through Dec. 29 . . . Jack Mann becoming national director of sales development and program coordination for ABC Radio . . . Barbara Joyce joins the cast of next Sunday’s (ID “CBS Television Workshop” . . . “A Pictorial History of Radio,” prof Irving Settel’s latest, is off the presses and will be on the stands Monday (12) . . . Edward R. Hitz has retired, as expected, as vicepresident and general sales executive of NBC-TV, but he says he plans, to continue in the fields of sales, advertising and broadcasting; he’s been with the web for more than 30 years . . . Young & Rubicam director Louis N. Brockway is a consultant to the National Educational Television & Radio Center . . Hal March, who occasionally subs' for Jack Paar, will front “Come Blow Your Horn” On Broadway in early March . . . Nine new 25-year clubbers at NBC are technicians Carlos Clark, H. Weston Conant, H. L. Folkerts; administrative staffers Joseph Milroy, Arthur Poppele, Margaret Riebhoff, Clifford Slaybaugh, and engineers John Rooney and John Seibert . . . Lee Mortimer guesting on WABC- TV’s Joe Franklin stanza tomorrow. (Thurs.) . . . NBC photo unit manager Sid Desfor is a second-time grandpa, with his daughter (Mrs. Nanette Schatell) having given birth to a girl last week in Englewood, N. J, . . . WABC-TV topper Joe Stamler off for two weeks in Caracas, Venezuela . . . Robert Galvin named video tape-film-kinescope opera¬ tions manager for NBC-TV . . . Merrill E. Joels plays all the characters on WNEW’s 60-second “soap operas” . . . WNBC merchandising manager Joe Murphy to byline new bi-weekly “Profit Tips” column for Modern Grocer . . . Bill Weyse has become director of WNBC Radio’s “Journey Into Nature” and “People at the United Nations,” replacing A1 Lands- burgh who ankled last month . . . Wally Siegel is leaving NBC program merchandising to join Goodson-Todman. Evelyn Leonard, former Life staffer, new member of WPIX’s promo¬ tion department. Another new WPIX staffer is Mike Taylor of the station’s research department, formerly with ARB . . . Jan Tanzy, currently portraying the role of Baby June in “Gypsy” oh Broadway, will be featured in a Christmas Day tv show on CBC, emanating from Montreal . . . WPIX has inked sportscaster Jim Gordon to cover the National Industrial Basketball League series . . . Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt will become a teacher on WPIX’s Regents ETV program, “Transition,** Thursday (15). She will speak on the topic of “Politics and Democracy” in the afternoon half-hour show which starts at 2:30 p.m. Ed Sullivan snagged Robert Goulet, the Sir Lancelot of “Camelot,” for his first American tv appearance on Jan. 8 . . . Roy M. Gilbert, general sales manager of WQTE, Detroit, shifts to CBS Radio Spot Sales as an account exec in the N. Y. office . . , Leonard Bernstein will narrate his “Christmas Startime” repeat for Ford Motors Dec. 25; original narration was done by the late Joseph Welch. It was this as¬ signment that forced Bernstein to nix an offer to host “The Gershwin Years,” job now being undertaken by Richard Rodgers . . . Dave Con¬ nell, producer of “Captain Kangaroo,” named a v.p. of Robert Keeshari Associates, show’s packager ... A “Twentieth Century” film crew headed by director Wade Bingham returned from Namkham, Burma, after filming “The Burma Surgeon Today,” dealing with the life of Dr. Gordon Seagrave. Peter Kalischer planed to Burma from Tokyo to do the interviewing. IN HOLLYWOOD . . . Jim Hawthorne, prexy of the L. A. deejays assn., named program director of KFWB and veepee in charge of program development for the Crowell-Collier stations . . . Harry Maizlish, who’s building up a star roster for his FM station, signed Sammy Davis Jr. for a nightly hour. Previously set for strips were Steve Allen and Johnny Green . . . Henry Flynn named veepee in charge of the five radio stations owned j by Kenyon Brown, head of NAFI’s broadcast division . . . Larry Roman, one of the early radio writers, in town to confer with Columbia execs on screenplay for “Under the Yum Yum Tree,” the Broadway play he co-auth’d . . . Dick Linke, partner-manager of Andy Griffith, is arranging a trade of guest shots with Ernie Ford as the prelude to a possible teaming of the two bucolics for specs and pictures ... Dick Boone will have 38 episodes of “Have Gun, Will Travel" completed by Dec. 15 so he can work on two pilots and a feature the picture boys want him to do . . . Gene Rodney moved his base down the street from Screen Gems to Desilu Gower for the upcoming Robert Young series for CBS-TV next season . . . Helen Winston, who produced her first theatrical picture in London, has the interest of BBC for four specials. Her targets are Shelly Berman, Mort Sahl and Ernie Kovacs. IN CHICAGO ... Paul Molloy’s report in the Sun-Times that Jack Eigen would soon be returning to the WMAQ chore from which he was fired last New Year’s Day is said by the station to be “pure conjecture, without foun¬ dation.” Exact quote: “If Lee Vogel is to be replaced it won’t be with Eigen.” Meanwhile, the controversialist is still shopping around here . . . Phyllis Diller toplines tomorrow’s (Thurs.) Chicago Unlimjted-Chl Broadcast Ad Club joint Christmas party. WGN’s Wally Phillips em¬ cees, and Del Clark (WIND) and Don Ferris (WTTW) will work as j (Continued on page 54)