Talent Unload

Last month, in its report on radio monopoly, the Federal Communications Commission kicked about the dual roles played by the talent bureaus of the two major networks in acting as both agents and employers of artists, each buying talent from themselves and selling talent to themselves and charging the talent a commission. Last week, in a hasty effort to avoid at least one future headache, CBS sold, subject to ratification, its Columbia Artists. Inc. to Music Corporation of America for a reputed $250,000. NBC was dickering to unload for the reputed same amount its Program Talent Sales and Concerts Division on William Morris Agency, Inc., oldest genius-peddling house in the U.S., which can supply anything from Mae West to trained mules.

In the quarter-million-dollar transfer of tonsils and talent, M.C.A., hitherto prominent as an agency for popular bands and band leaders, will take over the contracts of and manage such savvy-artists as Elmer Davis, Ed Murrow, William L. Shirer, such announcers as Ted Husing, Paul Douglas, Del Sharbutt, such maestros as Andre Kostelanetz and Raymond Scott.

Preliminary investigations of the talent bureaus by the Anti-Trust Division of the Department of Justice are also believed to have inspired the two networks' scurry from under. Rumored next step to be taken by NBC and CBS towards placating antimonopolistic FCC: the sale of their transcription libraries.

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