Man with a Shoestring

Bill Berns, 33, is a square-faced radio executive with a crew cut, easy manner, busy brain, and a shoestring for a wallet. As program director for ABC's Manhattan outlet, WABC, Berns's job is putting entertainment and public-service items on his station on a practically nonexistent budget.

To get the job done, Berns sprinkles his listeners with inexpensive gimmicks instead of assaulting them with costly productions. Typical is Time Capsule (Thursday, 9:30 p.m., E.S.T.), a half-hour potpourri of life in the U.S. It is tape-recorded and filed with the Museum of Natural History, in case anyone wants a playback 100 years from now. This week Berns spent about two hours lining up the guests for his next show: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Al Capp, Author Charles G. (The Next Million Years) Darwin, Eleanor Roosevelt. The guests will appear without fee, which is exactly what Berns has to spend on the show. On past programs, he has preserved the pop of bubble gum, statements from Grandma Moses and Sam Goldwyn, a conversation between London and Manhattan cabbies.

Philadelphia-born Bill Berns has dabbled in radio reporting, TV, agency producing, pressagentry and moviemaking. He has not yet exhausted all his ingenuity on radio, but he thinks a little programming money would help. Now that ABC has merged with United Paramount Theaters. Inc., he expects the parent company will pour about $35 million into broadcasting. "Of that," he says confidently, "I hope $1,000 will come down to me." As for TV, Berns feels radio can survive: "If TV had come before radio, radio would be hotter than ever. I can imagine a housewife saying, 'What a terrific machine! You don't have to watch it at all, and it's so restful on the eyes.' "

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