The Week in Review

The TV-radio season officially ended last week, and it was plain that the year had brought a major shift in the positions of the two major networks. Four facts stood out: 1) NBC has taken an aggressive lead in TV; 2) situation comedy, long a CBS specialty, is on the skids, with only one show, I Love Lucy, still among TV's top ten (see above); 3) summer is no longer a TV-radio slump period; and 4) NBC is taking revolutionary steps to put radio back on the map.

Simple Idea. Led by its energetic President Pat Weaver, who is intent on upsetting "the robotry of habit, and stirring selective viewing," NBC-TV had a banner year on one basic idea: to stretch big shows from 60 to 90 minutes. To these large-format programs, Weaver gave a characteristically picturesque name--Spectaculars. In 1955, NBC did 39. One, Peter Pan, was two hours long and had the biggest estimated audience (65 million) of any show during the year. Seventy are already scheduled for next season, and plans are being projected for two-and even three-hour shows.

CBS officials tried to pooh-pooh NBC's performance. "Spectacular, schmectacular!" scoffed one CBS brasshat. "What we ask is: 'Is it good?'" CBS answered its own question by announcing that next fall it will do at least ten go-minute shows.

Rhymes with "Think." The decline of situation comedy, only last year the most popular TV fare, is so evident that CBS is throwing it out wholesale. CBS is canceling 16 new half-hour shows. Situation Comedy Writer Lou Derman gave the reason in last week's trade sheet Variety: "We've allowed our shows to become unbearably dull, repetitious, predictable, wild and sloppy. We've ignored a public that's sick and tired of watching, story in and story out, about Bringing the Boss Home to Dinner; and Forgetting the Wife's Birthday; and Getting Into This Disguise So's Husband Won't Recognize Me; and Is My Wife Killing Me For My Insurance Policy?; and Did He Forget My Anniversary?; and The Old Boy Friend; and The Old Girl Friend; and Let's Make Him Think He's Going Crazy; and Bringing the Boss Home to Dinner . . . Fellas, we've just about dug our own graves! . . . We've gotta think. You know what that rhymes with. Our stock situations do."

Hot Season. Another amazing fact of life dawned on the TV world: viewers enjoy being entertained in the summer as well as the winter. Result: summer has become a hot season for TV. Only two sponsors dropped CBS shows for the summer, and NBC's summer evening time is 92% sold. NBC has only twelve summer replacement shows, as compared to 20 last year. Many of the big shows, e.g., Toast of the Town, What's My Line?, will continue through the summer.

NBC is offering four summer Spectaculars. One, a nostalgic reminiscence of a prewar year, Remember--1938, was shown last week with Groucho Marx as host. Two of the three others promise to be good summer fare: the Broadway musi-comedy One Touch of Venus, and Svengali and the Blonde, a musical version of Trilby, starring Carol Channing.

Kaleidoscopic Phantasmagoria. In radio, as in TV, NBC was making history. For the past six years, radio-network income has plummeted to catastrophic depths (TIME, May 9), and the network hardest hit has been NBC. To get out of the red, NBC is trying Monitor, a 40-hour, nonstop, weekend radio show (Sat. 8 a.m. to Sun. 12 midnight). Last week Monitor got under way with $1,400,000 in advance billings (by this week $1,550,000), an incalculable amount of advance ballyhoo, and the promise that it would "keep listeners in instantaneous touch with everything interesting or entertaining anywhere in the world." It was a large promise, and NBC set out to keep it with a bang. From a specially built, $150,000 pushbutton listening post in Manhattan, Monitor took its listeners on the kind of joy ride that led Pat Weaver to describe his brain child as a "kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria." Monitor went to a California beach for live jive, to a Manhattan bar for an interview about baseball in double talk (replied one sober customer, to an almost sense-making nonsensical question: "Absolutely. Of course. I agree."), to Washington for political opinion, to what was alleged to be a Long Island oyster bed for the sound of oysters (liquid and melodious), to a plane over the Atlantic for the feel of a flight to Europe (dull), to the Bucks County Playhouse at New Hope, Pa., for a scene from a new play--and so on into the night. With all the facilities of the network thrown its way, Monitor, a natural rover built for speed, proved first time out that it had variety, imagination, a sense of humor and an oyster bed full of gimmicks.

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