All-Day Looker

For the past fortnight, New Yorkers have been having their first look at daylong television. Beginning at 7 a.m. Du Mont's WABD flickers along all day until the regular evening program starts. The programs are strongly reminiscent of daytime radio: setting-up exercises, Broadway gossip, popular music, women's news--everything except soap opera.

The chief innovation is a television baby sitter called Du Mont Kindergarten at 8:30 a.m. This features a young woman named Pat Meikle, who tries to keep small fry pinned to their chairs with 30 minutes of fairy tales, alphabet instruction and handicrafts. The idea is to let mothers get on with their housework. Response has been so favorable that the program may be expanded to an hour.

With 64 quarter-hours each week already sponsored, Du Mont claims that its daytime TV is already in the black. NBC, CBS, and ABC have hesitated about daytime TV because they are primarily in the radio business--and radio profits foot the bill for their TV. If the surveys are right, TV cuts deeply into radio's audience, and the networks cannot yet nerve themselves to kill the goose that has been laying golden eggs for 25 years.

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