TV Newspaper

One day early this year, Comedian Dave Garroway got up to go to work at 4 a.m., and before the sun was well up, the television world was pretty well agreed on the morning's work: Dave had laid an egg. He was launching a new TV newscast called Today (weekdays, 7 a.m., NBC), and he had almost no sponsors. But he had more communication gadgets--teletype machines, TV monitors, assorted dials, radio earphones, news films--than he knew what to do with. TV critics earnestly advised Dave Garroway, a nice fellow, to go back to being a funnyman. Dave grinned and went back to work on his new program.

By this week, nine months later, Gar-roway's Today was the most popular daytime news program on TV and a rousing success. During July it had more TViewers than the afternoon telecasts of the presidential conventions. While most other daytime TV shows drooped from a lack of summertime sponsors, Today sold a hatful of time to advertisers ranging from waxmakers to publishers. Garroway's salary rose to a high of $5,000 a week. Yet nothing much has changed on the program. Garroway and his 35 co-workers have just grown more expert in handling their equipment, and have learned a few tricks about selling the news. Says Garroway: "Now we never say, 'Here's something of interest to dog lovers . . .' because then all the non-dog lovers leave us. We try to make the specific more general and the general more specific."

The show opens with a five-minute news summary, followed by sport results, a nationwide weather rundown ("People in New York seem to want to know whether it's raining in Omaha"), and an interview with a guest who may be a fashion designer or a Connecticut tobacco grower. Finally, there is a twelve-minute news package delivered by Garroway, Jim Fleming and Jack Lescoulie ("We have three commentators--no waiting"). The second hour of Today is pretty much a repeat of the first, and a third hour, off the air in the East, is telecast to the later-rising Far West. When Today is over, Garroway hustles upstairs from his street-level TV studio to broadcast his 15-minute Dial Dave Garroway radio show.

Garroway used to like late hours. Now he beds down in his Park Avenue apartment by 8 each evening ("It's easy when you have to get up at 4 each morning"). He likes to think he has revolutionized the morning habits of a good part of the nation, as well as his own. "People write us that they're eating breakfast in the living room next to the TV set instead of in the kitchen or dining room. Some even put their sets on rollers or rig up mirrors s.o they can keep an eye on the show while dressing." He feels that his "national TV newspaper" may have an even greater sociological impact by cutting down on the nation's divorce rate: "God knows that a lot of husbands watching the show aren't arguing with their wives." Then he adds, thoughtfully: "Why, a show like this might have saved my own marriage."

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