WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH THE WILLMOORE KENDALLS?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000300360020-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 3, 1998
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: December 7, 1957
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

 ~ tally, and the entire medium has
A RTC,itaei,pr i dA I 0001 03103 g
the bland., He is worried because
RALPH DE TOLEDANO
CPYRGHT
the "ruthless law of the decimal
point" puts bad entertainment ahead
of good, because an audience of
fifteen million people for an expensive
performance by the Old Vic troupe
is considered a failure by the men
who control TV. And he adds:
Elephantiasis Done Her In
CPYRGHT
erg
ightmare Alley that all is not well
with television. Where Batten talks
o Barton and Young nods to Rubi-
am, a bad case of the collective
hakes is increasingly discernible. For
at fine feeling, when sponsors break
own the doors and come through
e windows, is gone. So too, says the
umor, are the sponsors.
Television has developed elephan-
iasis of the grab-hand and the bud-
et; it is pricing itself out of the field.
he trouble has nothing to do with
rt or the "product." Those three
orsemen of the studios-Loathsome,
oisome and Fulsome-can still
aintain their superlative standards
n boring scripts, and turn up an oc-
asional two-headed child who can
ing in counterpoint. Americans still
ove Bilko, Edward R. Murrow, and
ohn's Other Abcess, and an aroused
ublic has not marched on Madison
venue.
So there is a mite of irony in the
act that television's troubles are
conomic. An art so blissfully wedded
o commerce and grandiosity has
alien victim to its own standards.
he equation is simple: costs in
alent, labor, materials and overhead
an be met only by an ever-expand-
g mass audience. It's not merely
case of sponsor greed. By slide rule
and IBM, the networks have arrived
t a neat, though unflattering figure.
o keep the sponsor happy and in
usiness the per-viewer cost of a
rogram must be one-half to seven-
enths of a penny. (In the days of
oss Tweed, the going price of a vote
as two dollars, but the universal
ranchise of TV has cheapened the
areet.) In short, two million half-
enny viewers must snap on their sets
or a $100,000 budget show. Half the
dult population must stay home to
ake a million dollar spectacular a
ood sponsor's risk.
These are neither new nor secret
tatistics. More than a year ago, when
earings were held on pay TV by
e Senate Interstate Commerce Com-
ittee, industry spokesmen said it
need for secrecy because the sponsors
knew it. Options were beginning to
bounce, and the criterion was no
longer, "How big?" but "How much?"
Though the top programs had no diffi-
culties, and the top sponsors (in-
terested in "prestige") no worries,
everything else was marginal.
John P. Cunningham, an advertis-
ing executive, lectures openly on the
"Index of Boredom" in reviewing
television's decline. Video viewers, he
warns, just aren't paying any mind
to what flickers on the screen, though
they still turn on their sets automati-
It might be worthwhile to take a
look at what has happened to top rat-
ings while all this has been going on.
As you see, they are down. Top rat-
ings today would all be medium
ratings five years ago. The top five
shows had a rating in 1952 of 57.9.
They're down this year to 41.5. What
does this mean? . Our agency's
research shows clearly that the grum-
bling is not confined to the profes-
sional critics. The Index of Boredom
has been rising steadily.... As far as
we advertisers are concerned, it is a
Time to Pause.
Kreuttner
"The name of the program is `Ga bage to Garbage.' The following
unbiased, yet completely sympath tic interview will be with Dr.
Summersault Tripskip, Rhodes Sc Jar, recipient of three Peabody
Awards, and further distinguished having taken the Fifth Amend-
ment 158 times in eleven minutes. ater in the program we will visit
Hollywood's dazzling Claire de C ave, as a diversionary tactic."
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300360020-4