THE SPONSOR

NOTES ON A MODERN POTENTATE

By Erik Barnouw

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Provided "as is" by Questia.com

Chapter One

Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game That pushes us off from the board . . . ? TENNYSON, Maud

ON THE EVE OF THE SPONSOR

When radio station KDKA, Pittsburgh, went on the air in November 1920 as a venture of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, it set off extraordinary explosions. Overnight the broadcasting age began throughout the United States. Starting in radio, it promised to expand soon into television; Westinghouse and others were experimenting with it.

During the months following the KDKA debut, the new "radio" counters of department stores and electrical shops were mobbed by people clamoring for sets and parts. And hundreds of entrepreneurs rushed to secure broadcasting licenses and build stations, which further stimulated the set-buying boom. By July 1922 some four hundred stations were licensed, and more were on the way. Newspapers were running columns and whole sections on broadcasting, and many were planning stations. ¹

Although the broadcasting era had been launched, the time buying "sponsor" was not yet a part of it. None of the first four hundred stations had sold time-for advertising or any other purpose. Most had not even contemplated such an idea. Thus, "the American system of broadcasting" -- built on the sale of time -was not a part of our first broadcasting boom.

But circumstances were setting the stage for the entrance of the sponsor. The circumstances can be understood by focusing briefly on those first four hundred stations. Who launched them? For what purpose? What were they broadcasting?

THE FIRST 400

The Westinghouse company, which had sparked the explosion, had been making radio equipment for years, mainly for the army and navy, which had been among the earliest users of wireless and radio. Before World War I they had shared the air with various others: ship-to-shore radio; professional experimenters like Reginald A. Fessenden, Lee de Forest, Edwin H. Armstrong, and others, some working in corporate laboratories, some on university campuses; and also with countless amateurs or "hams" who filled the air with code and chatter, and often enraged the military. The "hams" were accused of interfering with naval communication and even of such pranks as sending fake orders to admirals. To control the "hams" a licensing law was passed in 1912. Then, as the United States entered World War I, the amateurs were all ordered off the air and required to seal their equipment. Radio became an arcane military activity, on which the public was forbidden to trespass. Civilians could read about it in wartime fiction, which depicted radio as a tool of espionage and of heroic rescues on land and sea. ²

Meanwhile an electronic industry was burgeoning via army and navy contracts, which made Westinghouse, General Electric, and Western Electric (subsidiary of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company) into young electronic giants. The army and navy wanted quantities of transmitters and receivers-for ships, airplanes, automobiles. They wanted mobile "trench transmitters" (using barbed wire for antennas), "pack transmitters," and compact receivers. They wanted submarine detectors, radio direction finders, and equipment for the recording and study of code transmissions. All of these used electronic vacuum tubes; assembly lines that had produced electric light bulbs before the war were now turning out vacuum tubes by the hundreds of thousands. Under wartime pressure, masked by military security, the technology of electronics leaped forward.

With peace, the assembly lines abruptly halted, as contracts ended. Radio seemed suddenly dead. Some of the "hams" began to unpack their sealed equipment, but the radio boom seemed over.

Then Westinghouse began to wonder: those compact, easy to-operate receivers, which the company had made in such quantity for the Signal Corps, might the general public be persuaded to buy such sets, if a daily program service were made available? The KDKA experiment answered the question in spectacular style. So assembly lines started up again-at Westinghouse, General Electric, Western Electric. As a further listener incentive, all rushed to build additional stations.

So did the infant Radio Corporation of America, which had been formed in 1919-a year before KDKA-as a joint venture of GE, Westinghouse, AT&T, and United Fruit-the four corporations that controlled almost all electronic patents. ^* Curiously, the creation of RCA had not been prompted by any broadcasting visions. The purpose was to organize a U.S.controlled international message service that, by using the air, could undercut British-controlled cables and make the United States supreme in international communication. Nationalistic impulses were behind the move, and the RCA board included a representative of the Navy Department, which had wanted a radio monopoly-if not under its own control, then at least in congenial hands. RCA quickly achieved a dominant world role in the message business, but the broadcasting explosion turned its attention elsewhere. It became the distribution arm for GE and Westinghouse radios (all sold under the RCA trademark),

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^*	United Fruit had begun using wireless before the turn of the century to coordinate its scattered plantations and direct banana boats to profitable markets. It later acquired a radio-manufacturing subsidiary and had valuable patents relating to crystal detectors.

and it launched RCA radio stations. RCA, GE, and Westinghouse spotted their stations around the United States for wide coverage, to help build a nationwide audience. All saw their profit in the sale of sets, which seemed likely to go on forever, in radio and then television. There seemed no question that it could support their broadcasting services.

In their programming, the stations followed the KDKA lead. KDKA had opened with a news event -- coverage of the 1920 presidential election returns, which had brought Warren G. Harding to the presidency. During the following days and weeks KDKA offered radio concerts; broadcasts from local churches; speeches by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and other Cabinet members; a prizefight broadcast; a pickup from a theater; talks on numerous subjects. Each day's schedule was brief -- starting with an hour or so per day, then gradually expanding. But the diversity brought an overnight change to the meaning of "radio." For the military it had meant transmission of information and orders. Now it suddenly symbolized a coming age of enlightenment. It was seen as leading to the fulfillment of democracy. Government, it was said, would become "a living thing to its citizens." Broadcasting was called "the people's university." It would link rich and poor, young and old. It would end the isolation of rural life. It would unite the nation. ³

Radio also seemed a key to prestige and influence. With diverse purposes, transmitters began to go up on the roofs of newspaper offices, colleges and universities, churches, theaters, hotels, department stores, banks, and other businesses. All, in one way or another, wanted a role in the new age. Each broadcasting station identified itself from time to time, as required by law. But each did so circumspectly at first, with a sense of entering a rather special realm.

Colleges and universities were particularly prominent in the surge, and this seemed logical. Many had conducted early technical experiments; now they foresaw radio facilitating lifelong learning. During 1922 some seventy colleges and universities went on the air. Some began to broadcast adult-education courses, for which credit could be earned by passing an exam and paying a fee. Churches likewise saw in radio an "outreach" opportunity, a chance to fulfill the scriptural injunction that the Word should be "proclaimed from the housetops."

For all these early broadcasters, there was one major worry: chaos was approaching. All stations were at first licensed to broadcast on the same wavelength; in each community, they were supposed to divide the available time. But as stations multiplied, the sharing became difficult, and in some cases acrimonious. Some defied each other and broadcast simultaneously. Interference between stations in different cities increased rapidly. Many of the early broadcasters urged Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who under the 1912 law was responsible for station licensing, to establish order in the ether. ^* But the law was vague as to his powers. Its intent seemed to be that anyone applying for a license had a right to one. The law did not make clear what restrictions the Secretary could impose. Hoover considered it "a very weak rudder to steer so powerful a phenomenon." He pressed Congress for new legislation, and meanwhile called leaders of the mushrooming industry to several Washington Radio Conferences to discuss the pandemonium, and what to do about it. All leading manufacturers attended, and urged Hoover to act resolutely. Hoover noted with interest what he considered a remarkable state of affairs -- an American industry was begging for government controls. ⁴

The public, oddly enough, was not greatly aroused over the ether turmoil. Tuning a radio was considered a challenge, and many people sat up far into the night, trying to separate one station from another. But with scores of entrepreneurs still applying for licenses, the bedlam was sure to intensify.

Amid the worry the American Telephone & Telegraph Company made a historic announcement. Issued in the month of the first Washington Radio Conference, it was apparently offered as a solution to the developing crisis. But if AT&T expected praise, it was due for disappointment. The first reaction was indignation.

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^*	Originally the Secretary of Commerce and Labor was designated the licensing authority. After a separate Department of Labor was created in 1913, the Secretary of Commerce became the licensing agent.

-13-

NEW SYSTEM

In February 1922 AT&T announced that it would soon open a new kind of station, and eventually a nationwide chain of stations, to engage in "toll broadcasting." AT&T called its projected stations "radiotelephone" stations and likened them to phone booths. Just as one entered a phone booth, paid a fee, and talked to a friend, so anyone who might want to address the general public would be able to visit an AT&T station-a phone booth of the air-pay a fee, and address the world. AT&T envisaged thirty-eight such stations across the nation, to be linked by its long lines. A New York City station would be launched as soon as possible.

AT&T's announcement, dated February 11, 1922, said that the company would provide "no program of its own, but provide the channels through which anyone with whom it makes a contract can send out their own programs." It was the first proposal for putting air time on a for-sale basis. ⁵

Western Electric, AT&T's subsidiary, made and sold transmitters; the other electronic giants, as part of their patent-pool agreement, had ceded this field to it. At the time that AT&T made its "toll broadcasting" announcement, the company apparently had a large backlog of orders for transmitters. According to an AT&T official, Edgar Felix, more than a hundred of these transmitters were destined for use in the New York area. Sensing that they could bring disaster to the air, AT&T began telling customers that it would be months or even years before delivery could be made, but that AT&T's "toll" stations would serve their purposes. Thus it tried to divert buyers from one-time transmitter purchases to continuing time purchases.

AT&T applied the policy to non-commercial as well as commercial applicants. When New York City in March 1922 appropriated funds for a municipal broadcasting station-to serve police and fire departments as well as education-AT&T urged the city to buy time instead-from the New York "toll" station about to be launched. Grover Whalen, chairman of the city's Board of Purchase, was indignant. "What! The great City of New York subsidiary to a commercial company? Decidedly no!" The city later managed to import a used Western Electric transmitter from Brazil.

The first Washington Radio Conference proved similarly antagonistic, condemning the idea of "ether advertising." AT&T published, in the new Radio Broadcast magazine, a reply that was mollifying in tone but defended the proposed "experiment":

The conference under Secretary Hoover's chairmanship agreed that it was against the public interest to broadcast pure advertising matter. The American Telephone and Telegraph officials agreed with this point of view. Their experiment is to see whether there are people who desire to buy the right to talk to the public and at the same time tell the public something it would like to hear. If this experiment succeeds, a commercial basis for broadcasting will have been established.

Most published reactions, like those at the Washington conference, were unfriendly. The trade periodical Radio Dealer condemned the AT&T plan for its "mercenary advertising purposes" and predicted a "man-sized vocal rebellion." Printers' Ink, perhaps reflecting the fears of periodicals supported by advertising, said the plan would prove "positively offensive to great numbers of people."

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, already considered a presidential possibility, was quoted as saying that it was "inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service . . . to be drowned in advertising chatter." In a later statement he expressed the opinion that if a presidential message ever became "the meat in a sandwich of two patent medicine advertisements," it would destroy broadcasting.

But AT&T went ahead. After technical reverses-ascribed to skyscraper interference -- it finally opened its first toll station on August 16, 1922, with the call letters WEAF. ^* It was almost two weeks before any sponsor ventured into the phone booth of the air.

On August 28 the Queensboro Corporation paid $50 for a late-afternoon 10-minute period on WEAF, and used it to extol suburban living and promote the sale of apartments in a housing complex in Jackson Heights, Long Island. Three weeks later, according to WEAF executive Edgar Felix, the Queensboro Corporation "reported sales amounting to $127,000, directly traceable to that one speech." It decided to buy four additional afternoon periods at $50 each and an evening period for $100. ⁶

In spite of this success, WEAF made slow progress. In September only two other companies rented the phone booth: Tidewater Oil and the American Express Company. WEAF revenues for the first two months amounted to only $550. But gradually the tempo picked up. The approach of Christmas brought the Macy, Gimbel, and Hearn department stores into the phone booth.

An advertising executive, William H. Rankin of the Rankin agency, became curious about the medium but felt he should test it before recommending it to clients. So he bought a $100 evening period to discuss advertising. His talk brought a flurry of letters and phone calls, including one from a prospective sponsor, maker of the beauty product Mineralava. The event proved crucial in the evolution of sponsored broadcasting. In a program produced for Mineralava by the Rankin agency, the actress Marion Davies talked about "How I Make Up for the Movies" and offered autographed photos to those writing in. Letters came by the hundreds. Mineralava received brief, restrained mention. The response enabled the Rankin agency to enlist Goodrich for a sponsored series, and others followed. By the end of six months, WEAF had won sixteen sponsors of programs or series. ⁷

Though some sponsors had negotiated directly with WEAF, AT&T insisted on paying their advertising agencies a 15 per cent commission, matching the commissions paid by print media on space purchases. This encouraged participation by advertising agencies, who began to show a decided taste for making the plunge.

There was a period of bafflement as to how to use this new access to public attention. Some advertisers, emulating the Marion Davies success, offered talks. An association of greeting card manufacturers sponsored a talk on the history of Christmas

cards. Gillette provided a discourse on fashions in beards since mediaeval times, culminating in the triumph of the safety razor. The resemblance to a carnival pitch was close enough to cause uneasiness at WEAF, which longed for respectability. A talk on teeth and their care, offered by a toothpaste company, was delayed while executives argued whether anything so personal as teeth should even be mentioned on the air. They finally gave in, but kept devising new rules. Prices must not be mentioned. Samples must not be offered. Store locations were a taboo subject.

Then came a new breakthrough -- a weekly 1-hour series launched April 25, 1923, featuring the Browning King Orchestra. The clothing firm Browning King was content to attach its name to an orchestra. No sales message was used; the programs did not even mention that Browning King sold clothes. During 1923-24 this Spartan example became the model for other series, all dedicated simply to "trade-name publicity": the Goodrich Silvertown Orchestra, the Cliquot Club Eskimos, the Gold Dust Twins, the Ipana Troubadours, the A&P Gypsies, the Kodak Chorus. Sales talks now tended to vanish from the air.

In a book about sponsored broadcasting, Edgar Felix later wrote that the audience "resents the slightest attempt at direct advertising" but is willing to refer to an entertainment feature "by a trade name." He added that a sponsor "does not earn the right to inflict selling propaganda in the midst of a broadcasting entertainment any more than an agreeable weekend guest may suddenly launch into an insurance solicitation at Sunday dinner." ⁸

"Indirect selling" -- via "trade-name publicity" -- became the central doctrine of WEAF policy, and helped it to win increasing acceptance.

To some observers, even trade-name publicity was a scandal. Writing in Century magazine- June 1924-Bruce Bliven described radio as a medium of magnificent promise given to "outrageous rubbish." But audiences grew, and sponsors came in increasing numbers.

A factor in the growing success was crucial governmental help -- from Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover himself. Hoover, urged on by the second Washington Radio Conference, held in March 1923, had taken drastic steps to reduce ether chaos. Dispersing stations among several wavelengths, he also adopted a plan that created, in effect, a hierarchy of stations. Some would be "clear channel" stations, free of interference over most of the country, and therefore able to use the maximum permitted power. Less privileged would be "regional" stations, which would share a wavelength with other regional stations, and were therefore limited to medium power. At the bottom of the hierarchy would be "local" stations, serving small areas, and therefore very restricted in power, and in some cases confined to daytime hours to minimize interference. Most were part-time stations.

AT&T took the position that the stations owned by others, including college-owned stations, were all "special-interest" stations, whereas a "toll" station was for everybody and should therefore have preferential treatment. Hoover apparently accepted this argument: WEAF won a clear channel. Most educational stations received "local" channels-a matter that caused increasing bitterness during following years.

But AT&T schedules began to represent the aristocracy of radio programming. In 1923 AT&T launched its second toll station, WCAP, Washington, linked by wire to WEAF, New York. AT&T began a series of spectacular "chain broadcast" experiments, while developing a special kind of cable for station interconnection. It generally refused the use of its cables for chain broadcasts by others. AT&T was rapidly winning unquestioned supremacy in programming.

All this put other stations under agonizing pressures. Their potential was limited, while their costs rose. During the early euphoria most stations had been besieged by volunteer performers, from the amateur to the famous, wanting their moment in history. And stations had used copyrighted material including music, news bulletins, fiction, and poetry, without permission or thought of royalties. It was all considered a benefaction. But in 1922 the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers began to ask payment for use of ASCAP-controlled music; an annual license fee was demanded of each station. WEAF settled at once-for a $500 fee for the first year, due to rise sharply in later years. Literary copyright owners began to make similar demands. The salaries paid to WEAF's sponsored performers meanwhile spurred artist demands everywhere. WEAF's Eveready Hour, launched in December 1923 and soon featured in "chain" broadcasts, was said to have paid Will Rogers $1000 for a single performance. Such rumors sent all costs spiraling upward.

Alarmed at the escalation, RCA, GE, Westinghouse, and others began to think about selling time. But a curious battle developed: AT&T said they had no right to.

MONOPOLY GAMES

In giving its plan telephonic terminology, AT&T had been pursuing a tricky legal strategy. When joining GE, Westinghouse, and United Fruit in the organizing of RCA, the partners had formed a patent pool which protected each in its traditional line of work, while dividing new empires insofar as they could foresee them. Each had the use of all the patents-within its assigned sphere. AT&T had been assured of the sole right to operate a commercial telephone service. In adopting such terminology as "toll" and "radiotelephony," AT&T was warning its partners that it considered sponsored broadcasting a new phase of the telephone business, and therefore sole AT&T territory. ⁹

The dispute brought furious behind-closed-doors argument, continuing for months. Since their whole relationship raised questions vis-à-vis antitrust law, none of the partners wished to air the dispute in public. Meanwhile GE, Westinghouse, and RCA adopted a modified sponsorship system. A Schrafft's Tearoom Orchestra was heard in New York on WJZ, ^* featuring musicians paid by Schrafft's restaurants, but this "sponsor" ("underwriter," a later generation would say) did not pay for time. Similarly, Wanamaker's store supported the Wanamaker Organ Concerts, but got free time. In the same way Harper's Bazaar provided fashion talks, and Field and Stream a sports program. This trend was followed by stations throughout the country, and increasingly filled the air with trade names, and the press with protests. But in Manhattan boardrooms GE, Westinghouse, RCA, and AT&T officials faced each other with argument and counterargument, threat and counterthreat.

If a compromise was at last found-one that dramatically reorganized the industry -- it was partly because of government action. In 1924 the Federal Trade Commission issued a formal charge that AT&T, RCA, GE, Westinghouse, United Fruit, and subsidiaries had conspired to create a monopoly in broadcasting and the manufacture of radio devices. The FTC planned hearings to examine the group's agreements and competitive practices. The announcement gave the accused a strong incentive to settle their quarrel, and loosen their close ties.

After long, stiff bargaining, AT&T agreed to sell WEAF for $1 million and withdraw entirely from broadcasting-but under terms that ensured it a continuing, lucrative revenue. A central broadcasting organization, the National Broadcasting Company, would be formed by RCA, GE, and Westinghouse. Their stations, and others that might affiliate with them, would be linked by AT&T lines, which would mean a telephone bill for the network of about $1 million for the first year, and rising sharply as the operations expanded. AT&T's WCAP, Washington, would be dissolved, with its time taken over by RCA's WRC, Washington. The new organization was incorporated early in 1926. With its founding, "toll" broadcasting was formally transferred to the national scene, though the telephone terminology was dropped.

The conferees argued briefly whether they should claim the sole right to broadcast on a sponsorship basis continuing the AT&T claim. The idea was, however, forgotten.

Thus the system-soon to be known as "the American system of broadcasting" -- entered its nationwide network phase. But its promoters dared not say so-not yet.

NATIONAL

In the dramatic full-page announcements -- September 1926 -- of the creation of the National Broadcasting Company, such words

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^*	Originally a Westinghouse station, soon transferred to RCA.

as "advertising," "toll," and "sponsor" did not appear. To the reader, the rationale for the creation of NBC seemed to be the same as for the launching of KDKA, but looking to a nationwide reach.

RCA estimated that 5 million homes already had radios while 21 million remained to be equipped. If programming of importance and highest quality were made available, all would want to buy. Therefore RCA, as the world's largest distributor of radios, had a stake in providing such programming. For this reason this "instrument of great public service" was being created. It would broadcast, throughout the United States, every event of national importance. Fine programs would be made available to stations coast to coast-not only those of RCA and its associates. An Advisory Council of distinguished citizens would watch over the service.

On November 15, 1926, from the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, in the presence of leaders of industry and finance, a galaxy of theater and concert stars-Mary Garden, Will Rogers, Titta Ruffo, Walter Damrosch, Weber and Fields, Vincent Lopez, and others-helped launch the network in a mammoth debut. By January 1, 1927, NBC had two networks in operation. It was a beginning of extraordinary promise.

The network's position was fortified a month later by passage of the Radio Act of 1927. This law has often been cited as establishing the commercial broadcasting system, but it scarcely did so. One sentence in the 7000-word document specified that a person or company paying for or furnishing a program had to be identified. But otherwise the law, like the NBC announcement, sidestepped the matter of "ether advertising"; it neither authorized nor forbade it. It said nothing about the sale of time. It made clear that no licensee could own the channel assigned to him. The channel was to be used for "the public interest, convenience, or necessity." ¹⁰

But the law clearly empowered the commission to organize the spectrum -- for television as well as radio-in the way Hoover had begun. Legal action of this sort had become a dire need when a Federal court ruled that Hoover had exceeded his authority-a ruling that had brought hellish confusion as stations freely increased their power and roamed the dial in search of favorable positions. ^* The National Broadcasting Company had begged for peace in the spectrum; once again broadcasting leaders pleaded for government regulation.

The new law seemed to signal an era of stability and prosperity. Major corporations flocked to the new network. Concerts, classical and semiclassical, dominated its initial programming-with The Ampico Hour, The Maxwell House Hour, The Palmolive Hour, The General Motors Family Party, The Cities Service Orchestra. Continuing from AT&T days were The Cliquot Club Eskimos, The lpana Troubadours, and others. The Eveready Hour scored triumphs with its drama experiments, especially a program on Joan of Arc starring Rosaline Greene, which had to be repeated several times.

An air of dignity dominated the proceedings. In the evening announcers wore tuxedos. They often began, "Ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience. . . ." Some had quasi-English accents.

NBC policies, following AT&T's example, began with extreme caution. The company's first president, Merlin H. Aylesworth-recruited from the electric utility field-told a congressional committee in 1928 that NBC sponsors did not go in for any "direct advertising." Asked to explain further, he said: "These clients neither describe their product nor name its price but simply depend on the good-will that results from their contribution of good programs." NBC had apparently adopted the AT&T policy centered on "trade-name publicity." ¹¹

Almost as austere in its dedication -- at least in regard to nighttime hours -- was the first code of the National Association of Broadcasters. The NAB had been formed in 1923 to combat ASCAP demands but had expanded into other areas. Its first code, proclaimed in 1928, stated: "Commercial announcements, as the term is generally understood, should not be broadcast between seven and eleven p.m." The NAB apparently felt at this time that business belonged to daytime hours, whereas evening was a family domain.

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^*	The case was U.S. v. Zenith ( 1926). Zenith had challenged the legality of a Hoover order and had won the decision.

But this view soon began to erode. The 1929 stock market crash, and the business collapse that followed, undoubtedly contributed to the shift; resolute salesmanship now seemed needed. The competition of a new and struggling network, the Columbia Broadcasting System, also contributed. Making a perilous start, several times verging on collapse, CBS scrambled for business and soon welcomed whatever George Washington Hill, flamboyant president of American Tobacco, wanted said about Cremo cigars: that they cost five cents and were not made with spit. Between blaring numbers of the Cremo Military Band its announcer shouted: "There is no spit in Cremo! " CBS president William Paley, reviewing the evolution of the art of selling by radio, noted suavely: "Our specific contribution to this end is the permitting of price mention." NBC president Aylesworth apparently felt the pressure and told his Advisory Council:

We believe that the interests of the listener, the client and the broadcaster are best served under our American system of broadcasting by frankly recognizing the part that each plays in the development. With this thought in mind, and after long consideration, the company has decided to alter its policy with reference to the mention of price in commercial announcements. ¹²

But the mention of prices was only one rolling pebble in what was already becoming an avalanche. With AT&T no longer threatening to sue stations for unauthorized "toll radiotelephony," the time-for-sale system spread rapidly. Among ardent early broadcasters were drug companies. They had the example of fantastic successes scored by "Dr." John Romulus Brinkley, whose Kansas station earned untold millions selling drug products-also, goat-gland transplants performed at his private hospital-to solve diverse personal crises. Thousands wrote him of their troubles; Brinkley, alternating with hymns, inspirational guest talks, and country music, diagnosed especially interesting cases over the air, prescribing "Dr. Brinkley's No. 6" or "Dr. Brinkley's No. 17," and, via form letters, prescribed for others by mail. The American Medical Association condemned him as a quack but the Federal Radio Commission kept renewing his license, and even gave him a clear channel. His station seemed to be for everybody. In 1930 the license was finally voided but he set up a transmitter across the Mexican border and continued his profitable career. Drug promotion was meanwhile exploding on radio throughout the land. On CBS an anonymous Voice of Experience, giving advice to souls in distress, and sponsored by a group of drug products, was soon receiving 10,000 to 20,000 letters a week. He too discussed the most sensational problems on the air, while the rest were answered via some hundred standardized advice letters, designed to take care of most human problems. CBS also featured the astrologer Evangeline Adams, whose advice-on the air or by mail-was obtained by sending birth-date information and a boxtop of Forhan's toothpaste. Kolynos launched a comparable numerology series from Chicago. The Depression, with its millions of unemployed, provided fertile soil for such series. ¹³

Merchandising schemes involving boxtops or other "proof of purchase" were also prominent in campaigns for packaged foods, especially campaigns addressed to children. Some 418,000 sent the folder from an Ovaltine can to get a picture of the heroine of the Little Orphan Annie series. And in the magazine Chain Store Management-June 1932-the Kellogg company told its dealers how merchandising via the Singing Lady program was helping them:

Just think of this: 14,000 people a day, from every state in the Union, are sending tops of Kellogg packages to the Singing Lady for her song book. Nearly 100,000 tops a week come into Battle Creek. And many hundreds of thousands of children, fascinated by her songs and stories and helped by her counsel on food, are eating more Kellogg cereals today than ever before. This entire program is pointed to increase consumption -- by suggesting Kellogg cereals, not only for breakfast but for lunch, after school and the evening meal. It's another evidence of the Kellogg policy Lao build business -- and it's building.

The sales leverage exerted by the child audience was noted in another trade-paper advertisement, headlined, "And a little child shall lead them -- to your product." But listeners of all ages seemed susceptible to sales messages spoken by a loved or trusted voice. Radio time salesmen and sales brochures stressed this in soliciting business. ¹⁴ Radio was, in fact, winning a loyalty that seemed almost irrational. Social workers noted that destitute families, forced to give up an icebox or furniture or bedding, clung to the radio as to a last link to humanity. In consequence radio, though briefly jolted by the Depression, was soon prospering from it. Motion picture business was suffering, the theater was collapsing, vaudeville was dying, but many of their major talents flocked to radio-along with audiences and sponsors. Some companies were beginning to make a comeback through radio sponsorship. In the process, the tone of radio changed rapidly. To Senator Burton K. Wheeler, the air was turning into a "pawnshop." ¹⁵

Protests were heard with increasing frequency. Among protesters were many who had played an early role in broadcasting, and now considered themselves dispossessed. These included labor, farm, and religious elements. But the largest group of disaffected were educators.

THE DISPOSSESSED

In 1927, as the Federal Radio Commission began its work, 732 stations were broadcasting. About ninety were operated by educational institutions.

The commission set out to reduce the total number of stations and to rearrange dial positions. In the course of an enormous shuffle, almost all stations operated by educational institutions received part-time assignments, in most cases confined to daytime hours -- which many considered useless for adult education. In 1927 eight of the educational stations left the air, followed in 1928 by twenty-three others, and in 1929 by thirteen more. But some were determined to hang on.

They were under pressure to leave. Those sharing a channel with a time-selling broadcaster were constantly urged to sell their portion; such sales were routinely approved by the commission. These persuasions were often accompanied by other pressures. The time-selling station would constantly petition the commission for an extension of its operating hours, so as to improve its service "in the public interest." This would cause the commission to schedule a hearing on the proposed redistribution of hours, with the result that the college-owned station had to send a lawyer to Washington to fight for survival. This sometimes produced a new juggling of channels. The costs of constant Washington legal representation were murderous to most educational broadcasters.

When WCAC, Storrs, Connecticut, operated by Connecticut State College, finally gave up in 1932, its dial position had been shifted by the commission eight times in five years. Originally licensed in 1923 and operating full time, its hours and power had been whittled down while it was compelled to share time successively with WTIC, Hartford; WDRC, Hartford; WICC, Bridgeport; and WGBS, New York. When it finally gave up, Connecticut College spokesman Jerome Davis wrote:

For ten years this station has sought to secure the right to operate a more powerful station and one free from commercial interference. For ten years this station has continued to broadcast into whistle-ridden channels, vainly hoping that some provision would be made for state broadcasting needs.

The college finally concluded that "a significant state educational project" was not possible under these circumstances, and made plans to withdraw. ¹⁶

A Harvard Business Review study concluded that "the point seems clear that the Federal Radio Commission has interpreted the concept of public interest so as to favor in actual practice one particular group . . . the commercial broadcasters." ¹⁷

The process left a trail of bitterness, which in 1934 produced the most serious challenge to be faced by sponsor-supported broadcasting.

UPRISING

As the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration entered office in 1933, its activism gave dissidents hope for a new radio deal. When the Administration proposed a new law to replace the Federal Radio Act of 1927, their moment seemed at hand. Roosevelt's aims were actually quite limited: he wanted a new commission, a Federal Communications Commission, which would supervise not only radio and television but also the telephone industry, which had been under the Interstate Commerce Commission. The deep involvement of AT&T in broadcasting made the move seem logical.

But the dissidents offered an amendment that was far more drastic. Sponsored by the influential Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York and Senator Henry D. Hatfield of West Virginia, it promptly won the endorsement of the National Education Association. College presidents, school superintendents, teachers, clergy, and farm leaders lined up behind it. ¹⁸

The Wagner-Hatfield proposal shocked the industry. It provided that all existing station licenses be declared "null and void" ninety days after passage of the Act. During, that time a new distribution of channels would be made, with one-fourth of all channels allotted to "educational, religious, agricultural, cooperative, and similar non-profit-making associations. . . ." These would have to be "equally as desirable as those assigned to profitmaking persons, firms, or corporations."

Passionate argument supported the bill. Dean Thomas E. Brenner of the University of Illinois declared that the Depression had brought on a "sickness" of the national culture, and that recapture of the broadcasting channels was essential to any cure. In a Senate committee hearing, Father John B. Harney of the Paulist Fathers described the treatment given to educational interests as "beggarly and outrageous," and castigated the commission for its habit of basing allocations on financial resources. "Oh yes -- income, income -- we will do everything we can for you." Such standards, he said, had created an "overlordship" of "commercialists."

Perhaps the most pungent campaigner for the reform bill was James Rorty, a former copywriter for the Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn advertising agency, who had, in effect, defected from advertising. As the debate moved to a crisis he published Our Master's Voice, a book whose title was derived from an RCA trademark. He attacked advertising in general, but his imagery centered on radio as a sort of screeching gargoyle "set at the top of America's skyscraping adventure in acquisition ad infinitum."

The gargoyle's mouth is a loudspeaker, powered by the vested interest of a two-billion dollar industry, and back of that the vested interests of business as a whole, of industry, of finance. It is never silent, it drowns out all other voices, and it suffers no rebuke, for is it not the voice of America? That is its claim and to some extent it is a just claim. . . .

Countless Americans, said Rorty, had grown up listening to that voice as to an oracle:

It has taught them how to live, what to be afraid of, what to be proud of, how to be beautiful, how to be loved, how to be envied, how to be successful.

To Rorty the atmosphere seemed saturated with a never-ending "jabberwocky" from hundreds of thousands of loudspeakers.

Is it any wonder that the American population tends increasingly to speak, think, feel in terms of this jabberwocky? That the stimuli of art, science, religion are progressively expelled to the periphery of American life to become marginal values, cultivated by marginal people on marginal time?" ¹⁹ .

Powered by such rhetoric, the Wagner-Hatfield bill was seen headed for victory. A headline in the business-oriented Broadcasting magazine warned: "POWERFUL LOBBY THREATENS RADIO STRUCTURE." ²⁰

But the bill had a vulnerable feature. Most of the non-profit groups supporting it were in financial straits, and not in a position to support stations from their operating funds. They had therefore included in the bill a proviso that a non-profit licensee could "sell such part of the allotted time as will make the station self-supporting."

It was indeed ironic that the campaigners should look for salvation to the very system they were denouncing. Proponents defended the idea: many non-profit publications, including scholarly journals, received part of their revenue from advertising. But opponents saw it as a target. Senator Clarence C. Dill of Washington, one of the authors of the Radio Act of 1927 and defender of the status quo, expressed moral outrage over the proposal. Wasn't there too much advertising already? Wasn't everybody agreed on that? Now the educators proposed still more of it. "That," said Dill, "is not what the people of this country are asking for!" Thus he neatly turned the concern with "overcommercialization" into an argument for the status quo. ²¹

Such attacks were accompanied by more positive moves. Broadcasters pointed out that they had unsold periods that could be devoted -- without charge -- to educational projects. Why didn't educators make proposals? To underline this point, the University of Chicago Round Table, a local Chicago series, was given a berth on one of the NBC networks, the NBC-red; this move came during the Wagner-Hatfield battle. At the same time the other NBC network, the NBC-blue, announced a weekly America's Town Meeting of the Air, to emanate from the non-profit Town Hall in New York with national leaders debating major issues. CBS had already, during the first rumblings from educators, begun an American School of the Air, a daily series which schools were invited to use in the classroom. There was much talk of "cooperative broadcasting." The Wagner-Hatfield proponents saw all this as a reaction to temporary pressures, and stuck to their guns. But some educators were impressed, and felt that broadcasting was entering a new, promising phase.

In the end Congress voted to instruct the FCC to study the whole question of educational needs, and to report back. The maneuver defused the uprising. In the Senate the WagnerHatfield bill lost, 42-23.

But the educators had scored gains. Throughout the following decade the promises made by broadcasters in Senate hearings served as hostages. "Cooperative broadcasting" became part of the administrative language of the industry. Stations were asked, in license-renewal proceedings, about their "public service" broadcasts and what non-profit groups had participated in them. The trend created a secondary type of sponsor, a non-profit type, who might pay program costs but got free time. ²²

But the commercial system had also scored gains. The defeat of the educational uprising had, by implication, established the commercial system as the official system-even though the new law, like the old, sidestepped the issue, and said nothing about commercial sponsorship.

The "cooperative broadcasting" formula brought a period of peace and rising prosperity. And it tended to divide network radio into two separate worlds.

TWO WORLDS

During the 1930's less than half the time available to networks was usually sold out. ^* Unsold network time was filled with sustaining" programs. Before Wagner-Hatfield this generally meant music by a staff orchestra-the most economical "filler." Afterwards it seemed essential to devote some of these periods to license-protection programs of a public service nature. Some proved to have other, unexpected values for the networks. They broadened the listening audience, disarmed critics, and gave broadcasting a meaning far beyond entertainment. And some proved to be financially profitable.

One of the two worlds was programmed and controlled by advertising agencies, serving their clients. This was turning into a big-money world, and it provided the networks with their total revenue. The other half reflected the nation's non-profit structure: education, religion, social services. It lived on skimpy rations, necessarily seasoned with dedication.

The two worlds used the same studios and were served by the same studio engineers. But they tended to draw on different writers and directors. There was little interaction between the two worlds. Yet they served as valuable supplements to each other.

Sponsored broadcasting, an observer noted, was often in danger of sliding into prostitution. Educational broadcasting, on the

____________________

^*

At CBS and NBC the day was divided into "network time" and "station time." Network time consisted of about twelve hours, in four segments (one of them was "prime time"), which the network could sell to national sponsors. MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System), launched in 1934, was more loosely organized; it never reached competitive status.

other hand, was in danger of dying an old maid. Their cohabitation was unusual but, for the moment, seemed practical and useful.

In the sponsor-controlled hours, the sponsor was king. He decided on programming. If he decided to change programs, network assent was considered pro forma. The sponsor was assumed to hold a "franchise" on his time period or periods. Many programs were advertising agency creations, designed to fulfill specific sponsor objectives. The director was likely to be an advertising agency staff employee. During dress rehearsal, an official of the sponsoring company was often on hand in the sponsor's booth, prepared to order last-minute changes. In "Radio City" -- completed in 1933 -- every studio had a sponsor's booth.

The "concerts" of early network days were no longer dominant. Most sponsors now preferred comedy, variety, or drama. Quiz programs were on the rise. The Hooperatings, inaugurated in 1935, showed that comedians -- Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy -- were the surest guarantee of a large audience. But sponsors chose other programming for various corporate reasons.

Thus Boake Carter, an often vituperative news commentator, was sponsored for five years by Philco, 1933-38, and then by General Foods and others. His political views were generally anti-Roosevelt, anti-labor, and isolationist. His views, and the vigor with which he expressed them, apparently helped him to win sponsors and later to lose them. A CIO boycott of Philco products persuaded Philco to drop him. Both his hiring and firing were warmly protested by listeners. But a sponsor's right to make decisions of this sort was not widely challenged at the time. ²³

Similarly political was the Ford Sunday Evening Hour, a concert series featuring "intermission talks" by Ford executive William J. Cameron. He lauded the ideas of Henry Ford and philosophized about American institutions, often nostalgically. This gave him opportunities to disparage unemployment insurance, surplus profits taxes, and other measures and proposals of the Roosevelt administration. The series was often attacked, but continued for years.

Political in a more subtle way was Cavalcade of America, a history series sponsored by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. It began as an effort at image-repair. The company felt traumatized in the mid-1930's by a Senate investigation of munitions profits in World War I. This showed that du Pont had derived more than a billion dollars from war contracts for a wartime profit of $237,908,339.64 -- which had sent du Pont stock from $125 to $593. The findings produced indignation -- among those who became aware of them. From du Pont they brought a prompt countermeasure: Cavalcade of America, designed and produced by the Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn advertising agency. It began in October 1935, shortly before the Senate committee report reached print, and continued for two decades. It sought to blur the "merchants of death" image by superimposing another -of a company concerned with "better things for better living." It engaged such talented young writers as Arthur Miller and Norman Rosten, and university professors to check their scripts. It handled history fairly punctiliously insofar as individual programs were concerned. Corporate strategy lay in the careful selection and vetoing of topics. War stories were banned; no shot was to be fired on the du Pont version of American history. The emphasis was on individual achievements in scientific research, and the quest for a better life. Improvements in the lot of women were dramatized periodically. The series was always idealistic in tone; no iconoclasm was permitted. Each program tended to be a tribute to a hero or heroine. Absolute taboos included government projects such as the TVA, which the sponsor considered socialistic; labor history; and, for a long time, the Negro. ^* Except for science and the role of women, history tended to end in the nineteenth century.

The exclusions were the heart of the sponsorship strategy. They had political ramifications, and were periodically protested by labor and black groups. But most people were quite unaware of the exclusions. They reacted to what they heard -- generally,

____________________

^*	The ban on Negro topics lasted until 1948, when the company agreed to a program on Booker T. Washington -- who had felt the Negro should "keep his place" until better educated.

with approval. Memories from school history courses were coming to life on the air, in stellar productions. The series won many educational awards. ²⁴

If political projects of this sort, well financed by corporate sponsorship, were widely tolerated, it was because many other voices and views were reaching the air. They did so through the forums and round tables organized early in the decade. They did so also through the substantial news operations that the networks -- notably CBS -- began to organize in 1935. ^* These were giving expression to such diverse voices as Edward R. Murrow, William Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, Elmer Davis, Raymond Swing, Fred Bate, Max Jordan. Their words, whether in "news bulletins" or "commentaries" or "news analyses," conveyed a variety of opinions. Opinion emerged also in drama, as in the powerful The Fall of the City, a verse parable on Nazism by Archibald MacLeish, which foreshadowed Hitler's march into Vienna. It was broadcast in 1937 on the CBS series The Columbia Workshop, which was scheduled at 7 p.m. Sundays -- a period CBS could not sell because it was opposite Jack Benny on NBC. The audience reached by The Fall of the City was small by radio standards but huge by any other, and its impact was electric. It helped launch the radio career of its young narrator, Orson Welles. More significantly, it attracted to radio other major poets -- Stephen Vincent Benét, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others -- who suddenly saw the medium ushering in a new era of poetic drama. They, too, began to contribute to the ferment of ideas.

This ferment was complex and chaotic, but real. If Boake Carter's observations were often virulently anti-British, they were effectively countered by Edward R. Murrow and others. If General Mills, sponsoring H. V. Kaltenborn on CBS in 1939, demanded that he not criticize Franco, and fired him when he would not agree, Norman Corwin's unsponsored verse play

____________________

^*

News programs heard previously on the networks, by Lowell Thomas, H. V. Kaltenborn, Boake Carter, and a few others, were individual ventures not backed by news departments. The newsmen relied on various sources, including newspapers. After a press-radio "war" in 1933-35, the networks took up news-gathering.

They Fly Through the Air, also on CBS in 1939, was able to heap anger and scorn on the Franco campaign. If the commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr., on MBS, regarded Hitler with considerable equanimity (he sent Hitler advice on how to keep the United States out of the war), contrasting views were heard on the same network from Raymond Gram Swing. If Cavalcade of America tended to picture America in white, elitist terms, the CBS sustaining series The Pursuit of Happiness made a point of its ethnic diversity, introducing such talents as the black exconvict "Leadbelly" (Huddie Ledbetter), the "borscht circuit" comedian Danny Kaye, the hobo laureate Woody Guthrie, and scheduling a radio premiere of "Ballad for Americans" in a powerful rendition by Paul Robeson. ²⁵

Network leaders had mixed feelings about the ferment and clash of opinions. At Washington hearings they emphasized with pride that sustaining schedules were serving a balancing function, performing services that sponsored programs could not be expected to handle. On the other hand, the clash of views brought angry letters, and protests from groups and sponsors and people in government. The networks sometimes tried to mute the debate. CBS made a distinction between news analysis, which it encouraged, and news commentary, which it decried. But the distinction seemed to affect form more than substance. Kaltenborn described a policy discussion to which he had been summoned by CBS vice president Edward Klauber, in which Klauber requested him to stop saying "I think. . . ." Instead he was to use such phrases as, "The opinion is held in well-informed quarters. . . . " Klauber pointed out that Kaltenborn could "put over the same idea" in that way with less offense. ²⁶

Despite nervous tremors, the American system of broadcasting during 1935-40 was serving a forum function. It was a time of world turmoil and contentiousness, and the system reflected it. At its apex were commercial operations of enormous popularity, successful in merchandising, and supporting the entire system. In their shelter were varied non-commercial ventures, reaching smaller but substantial audiences, and serving diverse interests.

Some thirty scattered non-commercial stations, mostly supported by state universities, still continued to operate, but their reach was minimal. If the average listener were asked, during 1935-40, about "educational broadcasting," his mind would probably turn not to those stations but to the "public service" programs on the networks, living as guests in the house of the sponsor.

Thus the sponsor-supported system had, by 1940, won a secure place and growing prosperity. It seemed headed for a glittering future.

Then came developments which seemed likely, for the moment, to topple the entire system -- but which, in the end, extended its domain into new fields.

SENATOR TRUMAN

Even before the United States became a World War II combatant, consumer products began to disappear from the market; from 1938 on, rearmament became a central concern. After Pearl Harbor, many leading sponsors had nothing to sell to the public. The making and selling of cars, refrigerators, washing machines, radios, television sets, and other equipment yielded to war production. Oil and gas were so strictly rationed that sales promotion was unnecessary, and seemed wrong. Yet major companies involved in these products continued to advertise -- to maintain their position for the postwar years, they said.

Behind this were economic factors of which the public was unaware, but which disturbed the Senate committee investigating the defense program -- the "Truman committee" under Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri.

Truman noted that the total costs of advertising, including costs of radio programs, television experiments, time purchases, agency commissions, and publicity, were being deducted by the sponsors as necessary business expenses. Why necessary, asked Truman -- when the U.S. government was the sole customer?

Donald M. Nelson, chairman of the War Production Board, said advertising was not necessary to do business with the government. Yet advertising funds were pouring into radio in increasing volume.

Another tax factor was at work. To prevent profit bonanzas of the sort that had descended on du Pont during World War I, the Federal government had adopted an "excess profits" tax that could go as high as 90 per cent. The move had wide public support.

But it meant that if a sponsor spent $1 million on a radio series, he was spending money that would otherwise go almost entirely to the government in taxes. The net cost of the series might be only 10 per cent of the apparent cost. The remainder was really subsidized by the taxpayer.

Truman objected to this. By all means let them advertise, he said, but let them pay for it "out of their own pockets," and not charge it to the taxpayer.

Commissioner of Internal Revenue Guy Helvering announced -- October 1942 -- that corporation tax returns were being examined to disallow excessive deductions.

A furious battle developed, continuing for months. Lobbyists, representing both sponsors and broadcasting companies, converged on Congress and the executive agencies. The prosperity -even the existence -- of the broadcasting industry seemed at stake. ²⁷

But the struggle began to intersect with another struggle, with curious results.

Government agencies were coping with a tangled forest of problems. Americans had to be persuaded to save cans, buy war bonds, learn nursing, black out windows, change eating habits, avoid rumors, become air raid wardens, write letters to soldiers, curb travel. How achieve all this?

Sponsors of all leading network programs began to receive a deluge of requests from government agencies and volunteer services. Would Bob Hope please plug the nursing campaign? Would Bing Crosby do a war bond announcement? If Mary Margaret McBride would only explain about saving cans, the campaign would be won. An "avoid rumor" message by Walter Winchell could save thousands of lives. Such requests began before Pearl Harbor, and became a deluge thereafter. Some producers said that if they honored all requests there would be no time for the programs. Print media received similar appeals, but radio was especially inundated. Advertisers saw the barrage as a burden, a duty -- and an opportunity.

They asked the Office of War Information, set up early in 1942 under commentator Elmer Davis, to sift through the campaigns to establish priorities. They themselves would form a unit, the War Advertising Council, to allocate the messages to specific media, in accordance with the priorities. On radio the messages might take any form the producer might determine: dramatized, musical, or straight, delivered by announcers or program stars.

Within weeks the system was in operation, and a stream of messages poured forth from the air! Advertising leaders began to speak of their industry as the "information industry." They issued release after release detailing its war services. A 1943 brochure proclaimed that it had already contributed "$100,000,000 worth of talent and time" to the war effort. The brochure was titled This Is an Army Hitler Forgot!, and carried photos of dozens of stars. Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones was persuaded to issue a statement on "the many values of advertising to a free nation fighting to maintain its freedom." On behalf of the Commerce Department he praised the war work of the "great information industry . . . essential ingredient of a free society."

The industry was successfully outflanking the tax people and the Truman committee. By mid-1942 victory was in sight. The Administration agreed that advertising costs would be deductible if "reasonable." No great effort was made to define "reasonable." Advertising costs, it seemed, were deductible. ²⁸

This helped to raise radio prosperity -- notably network prosperity -- to dizzying heights. Newspapers were experiencing a paper shortage and could not accommodate increased advertising; they were, in fact, reducing it. But radio was available, and was now enriched-financially and culturally -- by a wave of institutional sponsorship. General Motors, with no cars to sell, sponsored the recently created NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini. United States Rubber, with almost no tires to sell to the public, was financing the New York Philharmonic on CBS. Allis Chalmers, in a similar plight, was bringing the Boston Symphony to the American people. The Atlantic Refining Company had resolved to leave the air but, instead, decided to sponsor football on eighty-three stations. The Ford Motor Company, which was making tanks, inaugurated a daily news program on NBC-blue, titled Watch the World Go By -- a deft reminder of its earlier slogan, "Watch the Fords Go By."

For listeners it was an extraordinarily fruitful period, with little salesmanship; national attention was riveted on radio. For networks it was the most prosperous time they had yet known. For non-profit groups it was fine: they continued to receive time allotments, although these tended to be moved toward the fringes of the schedule as time-sales mounted. For sponsors it was a gratifying period of noblessę oblige, at minimal and partly subsidized cost. They were seen as patrons of the arts, Renaissance-style.

But they had achieved something else that was perhaps, in the long run, more significant. When the war ended, advertisers, agencies, and media determined to continue the War Advertising Council as the Advertising Council. As the Office of War Information passed out of existence, the Advertising Council itself assumed the task of determining priorities. The processing and distribution of "public service announcements," or "PSA's," became part of the established machinery of the advertising industry. It held high prestige. The annual meetings of the Advertising Council regularly heard addresses by the President of the United States, praising the industry's services to the nation.

The power to decide what messages are of social importance and must have wide distribution (and which are not) is a considerable power. That it had become part of the domain of sponsors and advertising agencies, who already controlled most network time by purchase, seemed odd to some observers, and even preposterous. But sponsors and agencies had not in the first instance sought a role in this matter. Because of their dominance of the most valuable time-including prime time -- the role had been virtually thrust upon them. It was a case of power gravitating toward power. Soon it was taken for granted.

The contentiousness of the prewar years subsided during the war, though not entirely. Purol, sponsoring H. V. Kaltenborn during the war years, found he could still rouse listener indignation -- as well as enthusiasm -- at frequent intervals. But the company stuck with him, and refrained from pressure, even in the form of advice. Sponsor relations were going through a period of remarkable harmony. Raymond Swing, preparing his commentary on the Nazi invasion of Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands, was so tortured by the thought of a middle commercial for White Owl Cigars that he offered to step aside for another newsman; instead White Owl waived the middle commercial. Middle commercials were never again heard on the series. ²⁹

Wartime broadcasting reflected an unprecedented air of consensus. This was exemplified by an appearance of Wendell Willkie on the NBC sustaining series Words At War, produced with the cooperation of the Council on Books in Wartime -- a unit organized by the major publishers. Each week the Council made available to NBC, without charge, for dramatization, a new book dealing with the war. One of the first programs, featuring Willkie himself, dealt with his book One World, about his journey around the world following his defeat in the 1940 presidential election. The program, broadcast in 1943, reenacted his talk with Stalin; then Willkie reported his favorable impressions of the Soviet Union and his strong conviction that it had "survival value." Such words from a former Republican presidential nominee were strange and dramatic, but symptomatic of the moment. They seemed to find acceptance. Shortly afterwards the Words At War series, in spite of such previously unthinkable program matter, won Johnson's Wax as sponsor.

Government statements, as in the army's Why We Fight films, adopted a similar attitude toward the Soviets. There were some, like the House un-American activities committee under Representative Martin Dies of Texas, who protested all this, charged subversion in high places, and predicted a day of reckoning. But during the war such charges were generally shrugged off. Consensus ruled. But it could not long survive the peace.

TRANSITION

The American system of broadcasting had enormous prestige as the war ended. It was holding the nation spellbound. Its economic arrangements had fostered rapid expansion and brilliant technology. It had served war needs. And it had established a modus vivendi between commercial and public service interests.

Now television was on the way. A brief prewar start -- aborted for war reasons -- followed by wartime advances in electronics had set the stage for a television explosion, just as World War I had set the stage for radio. This time sponsors, too, were ready. Their advertising agencies had experimented with programs and commercials.

The sponsor-supported system evolved for radio offered a pattern for the age of television. Few doubted it would be followed. But the decade 1945-55 became one of constant upheaval and conflict, with numerous overlapping transitions.

The main transition was, of course, from radio to television, as television erupted in a gold rush atmosphere. It won the national spotlight with astonishing speed and soon spread abroad as many American companies became multinational -- partly in consequence of the Marshall Plan and other aid programs.

But there was, at the same time, a transition from war production to the production of consumer goods. This wiped out the rationale for most institutional advertising and brought sharp merchandising competition -- at home and, later, abroad. This consumer goods explosion, held back briefly by the Korean War, increased the number, length, and stridency of commercials, and brought back much of the "pawnshop" atmosphere of the early 1930's. It was abetted by a wave of quiz and game shows, in radio and then in television, in which contestants were showered with consumer goods -- prizes that had a dramatic impact of their own after the austerity of the war years. Radio $64 Question became television's $64,000 Question, in which the "consolation prize" for losers was a Cadillac. Such prizes were donated by manufacturers in return for product descriptions on the air. Thus sponsor commercials were surrounded by minicommercials for subsidiary sponsors. There were also sub rosa sponsors. Drama writers and directors were advised that if they could make potato chips a part of any happy party scene, a $100 check would be forthcoming from a publicity agent -- who had, in fact, a long list of products that could earn similar pay-offs --

Money, money, who wants money?
	You know the answer when you do.
	At General Public Loan
	We're your kind of people
	And we like to do business
	With people like you.
	Cash -- at your convenience!
	Cash -- at your command!
	When you need money
	For any good reason
	We're the kind of people who understand.
	Money, money, who wants money?
	You know the answer when you do.
	At General Public Loan
	We're your kind of people
	And we like to do business
	With people like you.
INFLATING THE CREDIT BUBBLE: a spend-now "singing commer-
cial," c. 1960.

parallels to the "payola," or commercial bribery, that was becoming endemic to disc-jockey programs in radio. Along with feverish product promotion went credit promotion -- "buy now, pay later." Banks and loan companies virtually begged people to borrow money. Thus the ascetic war years were replaced by a frontier boom town atmosphere, with a scramble for stakes large and small. ³⁰

The period saw, at the same time, a transition from consensus to paranoia, as the cold war took charge of the American scene. Within months after the coming of peace three ex-FBI men, organized as American Business Consultants, Inc., were peddling along Madison Avenue a newsletter titled Counterattack, listing "pinks," "reds," "subversives," "fellow travelers," "dupes" -- terms used interchangeably -- who should be shunned by agencies and sponsors. The operation was financed by Alfred Kohlberg, a leader of the "China Lobby" and later an ardent backer of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The newsletter seemed to have little immediate impact, but won enough subscribers to become a financial success, so that competing blacklist operations began to spring up. Their impact grew after the onset of the Korean War in 1950. That year American Business Consultants issued Red Channels, a book purporting to expose "communist influence" in network programming and naming 151 of the most honored men and women in the broadcasting industry as part of it. "Citations" enumerated their deeds: they had aided Negro civil rights drives, opposed Franco, favored recognition of the Mao Tsetung regime, spoken out against the hydrogen bomb, criticized the House committee on un-American activities, and favored a détente with the Soviet Union. Such views and activities were now depicted as treasonable, and elements of an international "conspiracy." Senator Joseph McCarthy, adding his fulminations to the hysteria, helped to fasten on television in its childhood years a terror of "controversial" people and "controversial" topics -- a phobia that tended to stunt its development. ³¹

It was also a period in which the modus vivendi between sponsored and public service broadcasting collapsed. To finance the costly transition to television, networks pared expenditures on sustaining radio programs; many hours were given over to disc- jockey programming. CBS scrapped its School of the Air and Columbia Workshop. The NBC Symphony Orchestra, no longer supported by General Motors, had a brief television trial and was then marked for dissolution. America's Town Meeting of the Air disappeared in similar fashion. Early network television ventures included items intensely admired by educators, such as Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian-Carlo Menotti, produced by an NBC opera unit; What in the World?, a notable archaeology series; and Adventure, a CBS series involving the cooperation of various museums. But escalating time sales pushed such projects aside. Educators grew restive, and began once more to agitate for special channels. In 1950 they formed a Joint Committee (later renamed "Council") for Educational Television and won Ford Foundation support for its agenda. At the FCC Frieda Hennock, its first woman member, championed the Council's cause, and in 1952 the FCC was persuaded to earmark 242 television channels for non-commercial use. This time, mindful of Wagner-Hatfield experience, the educators did not ask the right to solicit advertising support. Thus they met less opposition from commercial interests -- none from those who already held licenses, because channels enjoined from commercial use would reduce competition for the advertising dollar. Commercial stations were even inclined to donate surplus equipment -and win a tax deduction. And they felt happily relieved of the kinds of obligation incurred by the Wagner-Hatfield battle. They were "off the hook." ³²

The American system of earlier days had now fissioned into two systems. The commercial system was booming. The noncommercial system, on the other hand, began in agonizing poverty. Educators had scored a victory, but some felt they had won an electronic tin cup.

Along with these transitions was still another -- from live to film, east to west. The 1945-55 decade saw television begin almost wholly with live production, with strong theater influence; by the end of the decade network schedules were 80 per cent on film. In the early years the major Hollywood studios had boycotted the medium, withholding both their films and their contract talent. By 1954 they sensed that history was passing them by. Warner Brothers, leading the way, signed a contract to produce for ABC-TV; starting with Cheyenne, it struck gold with numerous profitable western series, and the other studios followed, while also unloading their backlog of feature films. Hollywood quickly replaced New York as chief program source for the small screen -- in drama, comedy, variety. The stress was now on "action-adventure" drama: the pursuit of evil men. ³³

All these transitions were overshadowed and propelled by the irresistible advance of television. It surpassed all predictions. In cities where television began, other media experienced agonies. In 1950-51 film theaters closed in waves: 70 closings in eastern Pennsylvania, 134 in southern California, 61 in Massachusetts, 64 in the Chicago area, 55 in Metropolitan New York. On radio, ratings plummeted; even Bob Hope, a leader for two decades, found his radio audience evaporating:

1949	23.8
1951	12.7
1953	5.4

Now no major sponsor dared stay out of television. Some who made the plunge issued astonishing success stories. Hazel Bishop lipsticks, doing a $50,000 annual business, took up television in 1950; solely through television advertising, sales zoomed to $4,500,000 in 1952, and continued up. There were many such tales, especially in the drug and cosmetic field. For the 1954-55 season, NBC and CBS were sold out months ahead. Sponsor magazine advised: "So far as nighttime availabilities on NBC or CBS are concerned, forget about it. There just aren't any." Even ABC, a late television starter, was doing brisk business. ³⁴

All these transitions were setting the stage for another, which was to take longer: a change in business relations, modifying the role of the sponsor -- in ways whose ultimate effect was not immediately clear.

Network leaders had long chafed over the degree of control they had yielded, early in broadcasting history, to advertising agencies and sponsors. Aside from philosophical questions, it had resulted in schedules that were haphazard and often senseless. William Paley, at CBS, was determined that television should evolve differently. So was Sylvester L. ("Pat") Weaver, Jr., who in 1949 became NBC vice president in charge of television, and in 1953 took over the presidency. He argued for a "magazine concept" -- a system under which sponsors would buy only inserts in programs produced by the networks, or by independent producers for the networks, under network control. He launched Today and Tonight on the "magazine" basis, and both became large money-earners for the network. But these were in fringe periods, and served a miscellany of sponsors. Many major sponsors, long-time inhabitants of prime time, resisted the Weaver idea. So did many people in his own sales department. For years they had sold broadcasting to sponsors on the basis of a "gratitude factor" -- the osmosis of affection and trust from program to product. The magazine concept undermined accepted doctrine.

Semi-official industry pronouncements also decried the magazine approach. A vice president of the Association of National Advertisers warned that if advertisers "could not be identified with the particular program of their choice, they could not justify, for simple economic reasons, their present investment in television and would feel impelled to withdraw." The magazine concept, said a former president of the National Association of Broadcasters, "could not possibly be of benefit to anyone involved." ³⁵

The argument seemed arrested in mid-air. Many sponsors continued with their established vehicles and procedures. As costs rose, alternating sponsorships were becoming common: thus Philco Television Playhouse and Goodyear Television Playhouse, as scheduled 1951-55, were really the same Sunday evening drama series with sponsors alternating -- each spending $25,000 to $35,000 per program, aside from time costs. The arrangement scarcely reduced the amount of sponsor control. ABC-TV pioneered with shared sponsorships, in which each sponsor dominated a segment of a program. The arrangement involved some diminution of control, but the arrangement seemed to satisfy many sponsors with moderate-sized budgets.

When Weaver left the NBC presidency in 1955, his magazine concept seemed to have made little headway. But other factors were beginning to come into play. As the boom expanded, and as television came to be recognized as an unprecedented force in American society, the role of the sponsor was increasingly called in question.

QUALMS

Feelings of dissatisfaction were intensified by an accumulation of disputes and crises.

Early television sponsors who experienced huge successes included the Block Drug Company, maker of the chlorophyll toothpaste Amm-i-dent and many other products. In 1950 it began to sponsor Danger over CBS; within a year, Amm-i-dent became number two among the hundred toothpastes on the market. Block used the series also to plug mouthwashes, liniments, and shampoos, and all prospered. Block became one of the most euphoric of sponsors, pouring $20 million into television in the next five years, and often sending advertising agency executives thousands of miles to persuade additional stations to carry the series -- using "under-the-counter" payments if necessary. It cost Block $8000 to get onto an Iowa station, but sales jumped $25,000 in that one city, so "it was worth it," according to a Block executive. ^*

Amid the heady successes, Mr. Leonard Block received a letter from Laurence Johnson, a supermarket executive in Syracuse, N.Y., and an officer in the National Association of Supermarkets. Johnson -- a fanatic red-hunter -- noted that the cast credits on the Danger series had sometimes included performers who, he said, were listed in Counterattack as politically suspect. Johnson therefore made what he called an "offer."

In his supermarkets he would arrange side-by-side displays of Block's Amm-i-dent and its chief rival, Lever Brothers' Chloro-

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^*

During this period many cities had only one station, which could accept programs, from any of the three networks. This put station executives in a bargaining position. They sometimes found themselves strenuously wooed -- and bribed -- to influence their choice. The Block payments are detailed in Sponsor, May 30, 1955.

dent. In front of each display would be a sign. The Chlorodent sign would say that Lever Brothers used only "pro-American actors" and shunned "Stalin's little creatures." The Amm-i-dent sign would explain why Block used "communist fronters"; Mr. Block himself was invited to write it. The letter went on: "Would not the results of such a test be of the utmost value to the thousands of supermarkets throughout America . . . ?"

As a final blackmailing fillip, Johnson added: "This letter will be held awaiting your answer for a few days. Then copies will be sent to the following. . . ." Here he listed business and patriotic organizations that included the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Catholic War Veterans, the Super Market Institute of Chicago -- and many others.

Mr. Block reacted with panic: his expanding empire seemed threatened with catastrophe. He quickly reassured Mr. Johnson. He ordered casts to be checked thenceforth against blacklists and newsletters recommended by Johnson. The Block Drug Company was not alone in all this. Sponsor after sponsor was falling into line, nudged by Johnson's letters and offers of "polls," and bombardments from other sources as well. Johnson's missives, sometimes reenforced by personal visits, seem to have been especially effective. ³⁶

The Laurence Johnson successes make clear one reason why blacklists quickly conquered television and radio. Products sold through supermarkets accounted for more than 60 per cent of broadcast revenues. Manufacturers of such products were especially vulnerable to pressures that threatened their place on supermarket shelves. The networks, which proved equally susceptible to Johnson's "offers" and polls, were vulnerable to pressures that threatened their most lucrative customers. That television programming decisions should hang on such pressures clearly held appalling implications.

The pressures of the day went deeply into editorial policies. In 1955 U.S. Steel was sponsoring a series produced by the Theater Guild under supervision of the Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn advertising agency -- one of the most conservative agencies. As in the Cavalcade of America series, BBD&O kept the series free of race-relations stories. ^* Not only were these considered inimical to business; interest in the subject was now regarded -- by many, including the FBI -- as a likely symptom of communist leanings. This explains the extraordinary brouhaha over Noon on Doomsday, by Rod Serling.

Serling had been stunned by the Emmett Till case, which took place in 1955. The episode involved a fourteen-year-old black youth in Mississippi who had whistled at a white woman, which had prompted two white men to seize him, shoot him, and dump his body into the Tallahatchie River. In the face of overwhelming evidence, a local jury had acquitted them, but the community had later treated them coolly. Serling was interested in the phenomenon of a town closing ranks against outside pressures. He felt the community was saying, "They're bastards, but they're our bastards." When Serling discussed this with the Theater Guild as a story topic, he readily agreed -- in the interest of a sale -- to remove the racial factor by making the black youth "something else." The victim became an old pawnbroker; the killer, a neurotic malcontent lashing out at the old man as a scapegoat for his own shortcomings. The play, skillfully written by Serling, was accepted by the Theater Guild, the advertising agency, and the sponsor, and went into rehearsal.

But Serling casually told a reporter that the story had been originally suggested by the Emmett Till case, and the reporter mentioned this in a newspaper column. Then all hell broke loose. Serling found himself in endless meetings with executives of the Theater Guild, the Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn advertising agency, and U.S. Steel; all became involved in script revisions. Everything frightened them. It was said that Southern White Citizens Councils were threatening a boycott against U.S. Steel. Serling was assured this was no idle threat; they

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^*

It should be noted that "controversial" issues are highly changeable. In the 1950's advertisers readily asserted that they could not afford to have their products known as "Negro products." This influenced programming and commercials. By the 1970's Negro purchasing power was considered formidable, and black participation in commercials and programs had become mandatory. Behind these shifts was one unchanging element: the assumption that merchandising factors must determine editorial policy.

had carried out boycotts, he was told, against Ford and Philip Morris. The Southern location therefore had to be changed. An unspecified location was not good enough; it had to be New England. To prove it was New England, the play had to open on a white church spire. Anything that might suggest the South had to be changed. Plot details were changed throughout rehearsal; the play emerged as an absurdity. The hysteria was bizarre, but perhaps also ominous. It cast doubt on the sanity of prevailing editorial processes. ³⁷

Not all sponsors were so given to instant terror. The case of Alcoa and See It Now exemplified remarkable steadfastness. In 1951 Alcoa decided to sponsor an Edward R. Murrow series for reasons similar to those which had impelled du Pont toward a history series. Alcoa had been the subject of a Federal antitrust suit, having been found to control 90 per cent of the aluminum market. Losing the case, Alcoa considered its image tarnished. It approached Edward R. Murrow, a figure revered for his World War II radio reports and honored for integrity. He was invited to launch an Alcoa-sponsored television series, which became See It Now, produced by Murrow in collaboration with Fred W. Friendly. Irving W. Wilson, President of Alcoa, told them: "You do & programs, we'll make the aluminum. Don't tell us how to make the aluminum, and we won't tell you how to make the programs." The promise was kept. During the first two years this caused few problems. But the increasing influence of McCarthyism troubled Murrow, and he became determined to focus on it. Late in 1953 he began a series of programs dealing with McCarthyism, including one on Senator McCarthy himself, in which McCarthy was offered time to reply -- an offer he accepted. After the first of the McCarthy programs, Wilson told Murrow: "I wouldn't ask you not to do such programs, but I would hope you wouldn't do them every week." "Neither would we," said Murrow. During the following months they did several. The programs polarized public opinion and brought on Alcoa a flood of vituperative mail, pressure from dealers, denunciations from columnists. The mail ran five to four against Murrow, but Alcoa held firm. A year later -- in 1955, when the hubbub had subsided -- Alcoa withdrew its sponsorship, explaining that an increasingly competitive market called for a shift from institutional advertising to sales promotion. CBS continued See It Now on an intermittent basis, occasionally sponsored or partly sponsored, until 1958, when it was dropped from the schedule. Its budget -- $90,000 for a 1-hour program -- could not be recouped through partial sponsorship.

Alcoa's fidelity in the face of pressures remains legendary. But the sequence of events raises questions. Must the existence of such a series, which leading critics considered a historic contribution to the democratic process, and which had apparently helped mitigate prevailing hysteria -- must such a series depend on the appearance of a courageous sponsor? Or on a sponsor with image problems? Is television journalism to be a by-product of public relations crises? In the end the much-discussed Alcoa ordeal -- its "years of sitting on the hot-seat," as Sponsor magazine called it -- made most sponsors wary of documentaries, particularly when produced by a free-thinking entity like the Murrow unit. ³⁸

They were less averse to documentaries they could control. Documentaries of this sort were beginning to appear in local telecasts throughout the country, distributed mainly by Modern Talking Picture Service and other distributors of "public relations films." The key to their operation was that the films were "free" -- to schools, churches, clubs, theaters, television stations. For each use the distributor received a fee from the sponsor -usually $15 for a theater or television booking, lesser amounts for other uses. A sponsor, having spent $50,000 on the production of a half-hour film, might spend $250,000 subsidizing its distribution over a few years.

These films, on a large range of subjects, specialized in an almost subliminal type of advertising. A magnificent film on skiing might end with scenes of evening conviviality; on the table you would notice a bottle of Old Crow Bourbon, and its sponsorship would be fleetingly credited at the end. In a film on hunting techniques you might notice, in passing, equipment made by Remington Arms. Some films were highly informative, such as one on the history of the automobile -- with some of the more triumphant moments reserved for Ford cars, the sponsor.

Not surprisingly, AT&T, inventor of sponsored broadcasting, had also pioneered business-sponsored film distribution. Modern Talking Picture Service had begun in the 1920's as an AT&T unit. Spun off in the 1930's under antitrust pressure, it continued to grow. By the 1950's it could report that 53,000 schools and colleges, 36,000 churches, and 28,000 clubs and groups were using its films. Theaters devastated by television were beginning to save rental costs by filling available gaps with free sponsored shorts. Television stations were likewise turning to sponsored items to fill fringe periods. Network affiliates used them to help fill "station time." By 1956 Modern claimed that 99 per cent of American television stations were using its films. ³⁹

But in the late 1950's it was not sponsor influence over fringe periods but sponsor control of network prime time that was causing concern. The control pointed up an essentially fictitious aspect of the whole structure of broadcasting. The Attorney General mentioned it in a 1959 report to the President. He pointed out that individual stations were "legally responsible" for what they broadcast, but that they had long surrendered control over much programming to the networks, who had in turn sold it to advertisers and their agents. ⁴⁰

The FCC was well aware of all this, but preferred to dwell on less thorny problems. In 1959 it finally authorized a staff study of "television network program procurement," in which advertising agency executives and others were queried about program decision-making.

Their testimony showed fascinating ambivalences. Some, aware of legal quicksands, tended to minimize their own role. Others, apparently fearful that they would seem not to be earning their substantial agency commissions, tended to magnify it and to insist on its importance, as a matter of responsibility. "When we are representing a client and his investment," said Nicholas Edward Keesely, vice president of the Lennen & Newell agency, "we have to bend backwards to be sure that you don't get into these areas. . . ." He meant danger areas, such as those he had confronted in a Playhouse 90 drama sponsored by one of his agency's clients, the natural gas industry. The play dealt with the Nuremberg trials.

The script came through and this is why we get paid, going through the script. In going through the script, we noticed gas referred to in a half dozen places that had to do with the death chambers. This was just an oversight on somebody's part. We deal with a lot of artistic people in the creative end, and sometimes they do not have the commercial judgment or see things as we are paid to see, and we raised the point with CBS and they said they would remove the word "gas," and we thought they would, and they did in some cases, and at the last minute we found that there were still some left in. As a result -- and this was just, I think, stupidity -- the show went on the air where the word "gas" was deleted by the engineer. . . .

Q. The objection with respect to the word "gas," did it come from you originally, or was it on the part of your clients?

A. It came from us. This is our job.

Q. That's part of your job?

A. Darn right. ⁴¹

Those executives who minimized their own role generally insisted that interference was very seldom necessary. Vice president C. Terence Clyne of the McCann-Erickson agency -- which was spending about $100 million a year on television and radio on behalf of various clients -- said:

Actually there have been very few cases where it has been necessary to exercise a veto, because the producers involved and the writers involved are normally pretty well aware of what might not be acceptable.

Q. In other words, they know already before they start writing and producing what the limitations are, the subject matter limitations, that you will accept and your client will accept -- is that correct?

A. That is correct. ⁴²

This view, expressed again and again, was meant to reassure. Yet the vista of a generation of producers and writers so attuned to sponsor wishes that they automatically avoided "areas" considered, at the moment, controversial, was scarcely inspiring. The tamed artist was perhaps as ominous a phenomenon as the vetoing sponsor.

By and large, the testimony of the agency program chiefs did not suggest a renaissance in the making. A vice president of the Ted Bates agency, Richard A. Pinkham, offered this glimpse of sponsor supervision:

I can give you what I hope will not be an indiscreet example. . . . Last year two tobacco companies had similar programming. Each issued a tobacco policy for his show. These were on two separate shows. One company manufactured a filter cigarette, and his policy indicated that the heavy must smoke non-filter cigarettes.

Q. The heavies are villains?

A. Villains. Whereas the manufacturer of the non-filter cigarette insisted that the heavy smoke a filtered cigarette. It sounds ridiculous, but it's not at all. . . . It's amusing, but not ridiculous. The association of the product that might be recognized as the client's product with a villain, a murderer, or whatever, is certainly something to be avoided. ⁴³

The agency witnesses were followed by "non-industry" witnesses -- teachers, clergymen, journalists, and others. Almost all blamed shortcomings of television on the dominance of the advertiser -- often in scornful language. They spoke of "moral bankruptcy," of the invasion of the home by an "everlasting peddler," creating a culture "not worth living for and not worth dying for." Their testimony came at a time when each network carried only fifteen minutes of evening news and was without a regular documentary series; the massive "escapism" was roundly condemned. Some witnesses demanded "total divorce" of programs from advertiser influence. It seemed a replay of the Wagner-Hatfield assault.

In the end dramatic events -- a major scandal -- forced the networks to take action.

CHANGING THE GUARD

Late in 1959 Charles Van Doren, who had repeatedly denied "irregularities" in winning $129,000 during his appearances on the Twenty-One series -- in which he had seemed to perform miracles of concentration and recall while perspiring in an isolation booth -- finally admitted that all answers had been given him in advance. His recantation of perjured testimony brought a stream of other recantations -- some hundred contestants, producers, and others had apparently lied to a grand jury. The scandal rocked the industry, and reached into sponsorship levels. Charles Revson, whose sponsorship of The $64,000 Question had enabled Revlon cosmetics to engulf the products of Hazel Bishop, Inc., had repeatedly given orders as to which contestants should win -- and thus continue on the series -- and which should be disposed of. He left details to the producers, but was furious if his instructions were not carried out. ⁴⁴

Amid congressional hearings, FCC probes, grand jury proceedings, and lawsuits, all three networks launched reorganizations. They revised surveillance procedures: NBC's "continuity acceptance" unit became the "standards and practices" unit, with enlarged duties. CBS president Frank Stanton decreed that everything on CBS must now be "what it purports to be." He even ordered that canned laughter and applause be identified as such, but this was soon rescinded.

A program upheaval followed. Big-prize quizzes were canceled. Some were replaced by episodic film series from Hollywood, but there was also a return of the documentary. Each network, to restore something of its "public service" image, ordered a documentary rebirth. Only a year after the demise of See It Now, CBS instructed Fred Friendly to start a new and similar series, CBS Reports. NBC instituted a documentary series under the title NBC White Paper. ABC launched a Close-Up series. Some network executives looked on these as a costly, though momentarily necessary, form of window-dressing, but others saw hope of occasional sponsors more intent on prestige than ratings. There were encouraging signs in that direction. ABC secured Bell & Howell as sponsor for some of its Close-Up programs. Bell & Howell also became a partial sponsor, along with Goodrich, of CBS Reports. At NBC, president Robert Kintner was finding Gulf Oil ready to sponsor frequent news specials and occasional documentaries.

But a change of greater potential significance involved scheduling. All three networks moved toward full control of their schedules. "We will be masters in our own house," said Stanton. The networks would do the scheduling and let sponsors know what was available. CBS said it would consider programs from any source; it would look for "the best programming . . . whatever the source." But independent producers were now on notice that programs must be licensed to the network, not the sponsor. The network, having determined its schedule, would deal with sponsors and their advertising agencies.

The pronouncements were welcomed by many. The networks obviously had a broader constituency than any sponsor, and were considered far more likely to rise above merchandising considerations.

However, having made his sweeping declarations, Stanton began to trim them. Apparently "the best programming . . . whatever the source" would not apply to documentaries. In the documentary field, CBS announced that it would schedule only its own productions. This was asserted to be necessary in the interest of "standards," but seemed to independent documentarists a determination to corner for its own productions the limited sponsor funds available for documentaries. The other networks announced similar policies. ⁴⁵

Stanton also seemed at pains to mollify sponsors. In 1960 he explained:

Since we are advertiser-supported we must take into account the general objectives and desires of advertisers as a whole. An advertiser has very specific practical objectives in mind. He is spending a very large sum of money -- often many millions of dollars -- to increase his sales, to strengthen his distribution and to win public favor. And so in dealing with this problem, it seems perfectly obvious that advertisers cannot and should not be forced into programs incompatible with their objectives.

It seemed a promise to provide programs "compatible" with advertiser objectives. But he went further. He observed that advertisers and their agents often wanted to "participate" in the creative process, and he felt they should be allowed to. What did all this mean? ⁴⁶

The year 1960 did bring changes. In May Broadcasting magazine, discussing the coming season, reported: "Four out of five shows in prime time will be licensed to the networks which carry them, and sold in turn to advertisers." This reversed previous practice. ⁴⁷

There was a simultaneous shift, continuing throughout the following decade, toward the purchase of spots instead of complete programs. Program costs, which rose to at least double those of the 1950's, were a factor in this. By 1970 the sponsor of a 1-hour drama in prime time was likely to have to pay $200,000 for the program and a similar amount for the time -depending on the number of stations involved -- for a total investment of around $400,000. Under the new system the network sought a comparable revenue from such a program by selling six 1-minute insertions for around $70,000 each. For greater flexibility, the networks soon adopted the policy of letting each one-minute gap be used for two 30-second commercials. This meant that the sale of six minutes could result in as many as twelve 30-second commercials. ^* The system encouraged a dramaturgy full of intermediate climaxes, to create suspense for commercial breaks. How else the spot-selling system might affect programming was not at once clear.

But meanwhile another arena was winning sponsor attention -educational television or, to use its later name, "public" television.

GOING PUBLIC

The educational television system decreed by the FCC in its 1952 channel reservations had almost died of malnutrition in infancy. The Ford Foundation helped early stations into existence via construction grants; but that support had to be

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^*	As of 1970, the NAB Television Code allowed 10 minutes of "nonprogram material" in a prime time hour; this included commercials but also "billboards," promotional announcements for other programs, and credits in excess of 30 seconds. The allowance for other hours was 16 minutes per hour.

matched by local or regional funds, and these proved elusive in many cities, the large as well as the small. In New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, all channels in the standard VHF waveband were already in use, so that only UHF channels were available. Sets already bought could not receive these without expensive converters. Building an audience would be slow, uphill work.

The New York State Regent