Network Drama

Sybil Overton's husband was on the lam, accused of murder, and her stepdaughter was in cahoots with the police. Then, suddenly, all the problems on her Road of Life were solved: a plane crash polished off the lamister. Mary Noble, that long-suffering Backstage Wife, realized at last that her husband was really in love with her. Nora Drake, psychiatric nurse, finally finished analyzing her boy friend and saw him head home to his ex-wife and family. All last week, soap operas were blowing their last bubbles on CBS; writers were winding up their plots, sending the venerable shows down the drain along with a clutch of other programs. Reason: CBS is trying to save what is left of its radio network by severe retrenchment. Says CBS Radio's President Arthur Hull Hayes: "Ever since 1954, we have been losing money at the rate of a few million dollars a year. But so has every other radio network, some losing more than we."

The situation involves a paradox, for the radio business in general is booming. Today more than 49 million homes are equipped with more than 95 million radios; there are more car radios (38 million) in operation than there were home sets ten years ago. And radio advertising last year was up 3% over 1957. The trouble, from the networks' point of view, is that most of these gains benefit the independent stations, where advertisers can buy into shows that are both cheaper and more closely tailored to local markets than network programs. More and more affiliated stations hesitate to use network shows in prime time slots that can often be more profitably sold to local advertisers. To fight against this localitis, the networks are moving into 1959 with grand but contrasting schemes.

Soft & Sweet. NBC is beefing up its programing, hopes to produce shows so attractive that its affiliates will have no excuse to turn them down. NBC Radio's Executive Vice President Matthew J. Culligan sells his product with a highly polished Madison Avenue pitch. His patter is as distinctive as his black eyepatch, a souvenir of a losing scrap with a hand grenade during the Battle of the Bulge. He talks in terms of "imagery transfer" (which is simply radio cashing in on established TV advertising slogans, a method of attacking the public's ears while it rests its eyes); "engineered circulation" (urging consumers to use what they have already bought); and "sound thinking" (the proper use of mood music during commercials). During the past month Joe Culligan's time salesmen have already chalked up more than $2,500,000 worth of business.

As vehicles for this sort of "scientific advertising," Supersalesman Culligan is making the most of NBC's "hotline" service for handling fast-breaking news. NBC's Stardust series will dot the broadcasting day with brief appearances by big show-business names--Marlene Dietrich, Bob Hope, George Gobel. Analysis Stardust is a projected series that will put top newsmen among the other stars. The Image series (audio documentaries) will be an ambitious collection of documentaries starting with Image: Russia, a 1 1/2-hour-a-night, month-long study of the Soviet Union, "authenticated" by Hearst Columnist Bob Considine.

Cut & Clearance. At CBS, the high brass maintains that NBC's programing plans are old stuff. That Image series, says one CBS official, "is nothing but an imitation of our Unit One, which is already a success." Unit One, which has put on such impressive documentaries as Edward R. Murrow's report on the Murphy-Galindez case, intends to keep right on stirring up listeners with a report this month on The Business of Sex.

CBS's big effort to boost business is its Program Consolidation Plan--a high-sounding title for the cut in programing that last week sacrificed Nora Drake and her pals. Instead of requiring its affiliates to use 63 hours a week of network programs, beginning this week CBS will settle for 30 hours. The affiliates will thus have 33 extra hours in which to put on the kind of performances that appeal to the local supermarket's ad manager--disk jockeys and local news. In return for this drastic cutting of the network program quota, CBS will demand that the remaining shows get 100% "clearance," i.e., no CBS station will be allowed to refuse to carry a network program in its designated time slot. Consolidation may have reduced the size of its product, admits CBS, but it has already pushed sales to a new postwar peak of $4,136,000 in net billings. As if to deepen the split in radio's personality, ABC is striving mightily to bolster its programing, while Mutual is subsisting on a spare diet of music, news and special events.

Can a network find happiness and solvency by giving its restless family more freedom? Can familiar old network radio make itself look fresh and exciting enough to compete with a lot of young and vigorous local belles? That soap opera, entitled Radio Faces Life, will be one of the more intriguing shows during 1959.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.