Gunfight

Last week CBS and the Block Drug Co. combined to make the unlikeliest gunfighters since Batman and Robin. Together they had stood off the 1 million-strong National Rifle Association and its allies, the firearms manufacturers and game-preserve associations. That is more than Congress has been able to accomplish.

CBS's combat with the N.R.A. was occasioned by The Guns of Autumn, a documentary that purported to describe hunting in America. In 90 minutes, Director-Writer Irv Drasnin, a journalist for 15 years but not a hunter, compiled carnage upon atrocity. Black bears were slaughtered at a Michigan garbage dump by tourists with rifles. A gang of rednecks with the latest electronic gear treed a bear, then watched hounds rip it apart. Explained the pack's leader: "We feel that they deserve a chew." A pert stewardess plunked down $500 to "harvest" her first buffalo; then she pointed to the hoofs: "Jim, did I want those for footstools?" In the program's grossest scene, a languorous fallow deer was shot seven times at pointblank range; then a burly rifleman grasped the antlers for his mandatory macho snapshot.

False Rumors. To their subsequent regret, many gun groups and hunters helped Drasnin research the film when he started work last winter. As shooting progressed, however, they realized they were not Drasnin's subjects but his quarry. In early July, TV Guide reported that the program would describe hunting "50% from the animals' point of view," setting off a shiver of apprehension in N.R.A.'s Washington headquarters. A letter-writing campaign to CBS began. Harry L. Tennison, vice president of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Fort Worth, warned, "If we are paying out a lot of money for advertising on a network that does not go along with our type of thinking, then perhaps we here, in this area, can change networks." Others were convinced that the program " would jeopardize their right to own handguns. Advertisers were made nervous by false rumors; one canceled because it heard Exxon was pulling its ads.

Several days before the program was aired, the N.R.A. infiltrated an affiliates' screening and jotted down the names of the advertisers present. By air time, all but one of the scheduled companies had withdrawn their commercials. The standout was Block Drug (two 30-second spots). CBS went ahead with the program anyway, filling the station breaks with promotions of its own.

The N.R.A. remains complacent. Its membership, the association claims, is growing as a result of the publicity. "Hunters are not the slobs and killers that the show made us out to be," maintains an organization official. "Guns of Autumn didn't show people going out and really enjoying the companionship of others, the wonders of being outdoors or how the hunter has restored the wildlife habitat."

Unmoved, the network plans a sequel next week, Echoes of the Guns of Autumn, about the controversy. Says Bill Leonard, CBS senior vice president, "Nothing would so guarantee that a broadcast would get on the air than that kind of pressure."

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