School's Out

At this time last year, the "Chicago school" of television--short on money and studio space but long on relaxed ingenuity --was blooming. But by last week some of its leading lights (e.g., top Directors Bob Banner and Dan Petrie) had moved on to Manhattan, and some of its most original shows (Crisis, The Ransom Sherman Show, Portrait of America) had been dropped for want of sponsors. This week, when the fall TV season opened, the No. 1 Chicago TV comedian, Dave Garroway, did not open with it. NBC could not sign up enough stations to carry his show (10 p.m. Wednesday), because most of them wanted to put on boxing matches at that hour. Garroway himself is slated for some guest appearances on other programs, but without a regular spot and a sponsor he obviously can not keep his deftly integrated team together.

The end of Garroway at Large brought deep gloom to Chicago TV workers. Many of them feared that after next month, when the new A.T. & T. microwave relay system brings coast-to-coast commercial TV, Hollywood will move up to rank with Manhattan as a producing center, and the Chicago school will be in for a long, hungry recess. The trouble all along had been money. Most of the advertising agencies who pay TV's biggest bills have headquarters in New York; with large sums at stake, they prefer to have their programs produced and staged close at hand, where they can keep a firm finger in the pie. And Manhattan, with big salaries and ample studio facilities to offer, can usually lure the talent it wants.

As a result, complained Chicago Producer Ted Mills: "Here's the most important mass medium of communication ever conceived, and who are the people who determine what is reaching the nation? Men in pin-stripe suits who collectively are merchants of a commodity that isn't either entertainment or culture; it's a medium to make a buck . . . The indigenous qualities that regions like the Midwest can give to TV should be infused into this medium. We need the quality that Garroway had--a freshness, a vitality, something that is not jaded."

Added Burr Tillstrom, of Chicago's Kukla, Fran and Ollie: "We got panicky when we heard about Garroway . . . If that can happen to Garroway, it can happen to any of us."

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