The News That's Fit to Tape

This may be remembered as the TV season when public-affairs programs, as they are primly called, began to come into their own. While they cannot possibly match the concern a network lavishes on a profitable husband-and-wife comedy, they have made some impressive strides into prime evening time. Spurred equally by the guilt feelings left over from the quiz frauds and by interest in the political campaign, the networks are putting more information programs on the air than ever before. If the 1960 campaign seems to have been less fustian than others in the past, TV's exacting eye and ear deserve much of the credit.

Apart from The Great Debate, which despite shortcomings stayed consistently exciting, other shows, such as NBC's Meet the Press and CBS's Face the Nation and Presidential Countdown, have kept the candidates steaming under glass. Always at their best when covering events as they actually happen, the networks' cameras were brilliantly active during the U.N.'s recent parliament of fouls, picking up everything from Mr. K's desk pounding to Fidel Castro bearding pedestrians outside his Harlem hotel.

But the real test of TV as a news medium is whether it can organize and analyze events. In that field, the most notable effort so far this year is being made by a former college instructor and science researcher who bears the improbable title of Executive Producer, Creative Projects, NBC News and Public Affairs. A cigar-smoking, rumpled, un-Brooks Brotherly type, Irving Gitlin, 42, jumped networks last May after being instrumental (as CBS's Director of Public Affairs) in the development of Twentieth Century, Face the Nation, Conquest and other first-rate shows. "CBS is a mature situation," says Gitlin. "NBC is ripening." Translation: having lagged far behind CBS in information coverage for years, NBC is using Gitlin to try to close the gap. Among Gitlin's projects:

The NBC White Paper Series. Six hour-long reports on topics ranging from American flacks to U.S. problems with the Panama Canal. The series begins next month with a study of the Government's handling of the U-2 program.

The Nation's Future. A weekly, hour-long series of debates. Gitlin started by making a list of 50 "impossible" opponents, e.g., Ben-Gurion and Nasser, is still trying to line up as many as possible. The first, hardly sensational encounter, on Nov. 12, joins Atomic Scientists Edward Teller and Leo Szilard on disarmament.

Purex Specials. A daytime series intended mainly for women--although the first program interested a nearly equal number of men. Called The Cold Woman, it dealt with sexual frigidity in the human female, effectively balanced four acts of slightly soapy dramatization with clinical commentary by a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

Outside Gitlin's domain is one of NBC's greatest assets this year: Robert Saudek's memorable Omnibus, which, after a season off the air and years of scuttling back and forth between networks, resumes on NBC next month. The first show studies the various ways in which U.S. Presidents have used their power.

For all the well-publicized stir created by Gitlin's NBC projects, his old network under CBS News President Sig Mickelson still holds the most solid ground in information programs. Among the news shows and durable holdovers:

Eyewitness to History. A weekly half-hour designed to fill one of the more obvious gaps in TV news coverage. While TV can be on the air quickly with late news, and while it has shown its ability to summarize longstanding problems (as in Murrow's See It Now), TV in general has often failed to handle a big current event with analytic depth. To meet that need, Eyewitness will cover a major news story of each week, is pledged to change its story within hours of air time if necessary. So far the show has been effective but not always as flexible as promised. Its coverage of the Congo was long-range feature rather than news reporting; its analysis of the U.N. sessions, however, was both penetrating and immediate.

The Twentieth Century may last until 1999. Always imaginative in its approach to recent history, the program will leave its usual format next week to do a novel portrait of Middle Linebacker Sam Huff of the New York Giants. A small trans mitter was sewed into Huff's padding during practice sessions and an exhibition game with the Chicago Bears, yielding such odd fragments as a defensive signal that goes "Brigitte Bardot double blitz" and a sharp warning from Huff to an elbow-throwing Bear: "You do that one more time, 88, and I'm going to sock you one."

CBS Reports, now in its second year with Edward R. Murrow and Executive Producer Fred Friendly and still the best show of its kind, has picked Thanksgiving week to offer a shocking picture of migrant farm workers in America. While TV generally lacks an editorial page, Murrow's comments--for better or for worse --come close.

Tomorrow, a science series opening this week with the long-awaited demonstration of the machine that can write westerns.

The Right Man, a one-shot special which this week took a retrospective look at campaigns and campaigners throughout U.S. history, came up with a prodigious list of well-known stars--Thomas Mitchell as Grover Cleveland, Edward G. Robinson as Teddy Roosevelt, Art Carney as F.D.R.--and a curious collection of littleknown facts, e.g., William Jennings Bryan (Martin Gabel) calmed his nerves with a ham sandwich before his "Cross of Gold" speech.

Public-affairs shows still deliver far smaller audiences than a great many entertainment programs. But more and more sponsors are beginning to realize that the prestige and good will gained with a good information program can be more important than ratings. An unprecedented number of public-affairs shows this season are sponsored. Says NBC's Gitlin: "We want no charity in this area. The days of the Sunday afternoon intellectual ghetto are gone." But it still takes courage for a sponsor to go all the way downwind with a good public-affairs program. The most notable example this season is the Bell & Howell Camera Co., which backed the ABC Close-Up! survey of racial prejudice in the North. Closeup! has also had a turbulent look at Haiti, plans ABC programs on water pollution, featherbedding and Communism in Africa.

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