Pearl of the Indies

Slate Shannon is the kind of guy who could find breathing room in a sealed bank vault. Tough as Mike Hammer, suave as Peter Gunn, canny as the D.A.'s Man, Bold Venture's hero digs gems out of camellia buds, teeth out of the other guy's mouth and dames out of the pad. Before the show had its first airing last month, its sunny, sexy sadism had attracted more than too TV stations. Yet Bold Venture has no network and will never know the mingled joy of a national Nielsen rating. Like many of TV's adventure series, e.g., Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt, it is a "syndie" (syndicated show), sold to "indies" (independent stations) and affiliates across the country.

Sponsored mainly by local and regional advertisers and shown against top network shows, the syndies reach huge weekly audiences (as many as 30 million for Highway Patrol). The syndies are so profitable that the networks have formed their own syndication outfits.

Lord of this happy domain is Bold Venture's producer, Cincinnati's Ziv Television Programs, Inc. (runners-up: CBS Films Inc., MCA-TV, Ltd.). Founded in 1937 as a radio syndication outfit by Cincinnati Adman Frederic W. Ziv, the company went into TV eleven years ago with a good backlog of Hollywood feature films. Even better were its first self-produced show, Yesterday's Newsreels, and its first adventure series, Cisco Kid. Others followed, including Men of Annapolis, West Point, Harbor Command, and this season's Dial 999 and Bat Masterson. Today Ziv employs 3,500 people, uses ten Hollywood sound stages where it produces more syndicated shows (32) than any of its competitors. Ziv charges $35 to $3,500 a week per show (depending on the size of the viewing city), grossed $42 million last year.

Bold Venture, which was a radio vehicle for the late Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is a carefully glued blend of sex and speed. Where Highway Patrol's Broderick Crawford roars about in a squad car and Whirlybirds' Ken Toby and Craig Hill soar through the sky in a helicopter, Actor Dane Clark as Shannon plows through the waves in a 62-ft. sloop. Dockside waits his nubile ward, played by Joan Marshall, whom Writer David Friedkin describes as a "lovely, whimsical, gay, arrant broad in love with a virile guy--only he doesn't want to get married."

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