Three of Hollywood's major studios eyed the overwhelming success scored last season by ABC's Disneyland and decided the time was ripe to try TV. Several months of tackling the new medium, however, have left them sadder and wiser.
First into the fray was Warner Brothers, with a slicked-up three-parter for ABC called Warner Brothers Presents, con- sisting of three separate 45-minute series "Kings Row," "Casa- blanca" and "Cheyenne"-each carrying a nine-minute behind- the-scenes caboose designed to sell Warner Brothers pictures. The initial reviews, particularly those in trade papers, were not happy ones. Warners moved fast and fired the program's executive producer, replacing him with a man of considerably more experience. There have been shake-ups since on both the "Kings Row" and "Casablanca" series, with the former reported earmarked for replacement next season.
With the season now one-third over, Warners' ratings have begun to climb, its top show proving to be "Cheyenne," a Western of the old school. But the show's latest overall rating average of 25.1 is still a far far cry from Milton Berle's competing 40.5. Warners, like 20th Century-Fox, is learning it takes more than a $100,000 budget and a studio name to score on TV.
Fox, too, is presenting an hour-long show, alternating every other week with the U.S. Steel Hour on CBS. Like the Warners show, The 20th Century-Fox Hour is divided into 45 minutes of dramatic fare and nine minutes of behind-the-scenes movie activity. Its rating also has hovered around the 25 mark, as against an average of 33 for This Is Your Life and 29 for the Wednesday night fights. It, too, has shuffled its executive staff, not once but several times. And, particularly with its remakes of "The Ox Bow Incident" and "The Late George Apley," the program has begun to show marked improvement. Its spon- sor is still concerned, however, by the fact that U.S. Steel Hour, budgeted at $50,000 as against the Fox show's $100,000, is running ahead of the Fox entry.
Fox also is learning about half-hour TV shows the hard way. Its first such attempt, My Friend Flicka, was a long time being sold by CBS. But it has finally landed a sponsor, and Fox is planning to start work on three new series next month.
M-G-M soon ran into trouble when viewers complained the studio seemed to expend more effort in plugging its movies than in providing entertainment on its M-G-M Parade, budgeted at $40,000 a week. Changes were not slow coming. ABC reported the studio soon decided to reduce the number of references to M-G-M on the show and to eliminate some of the superlatives describing forthcoming films.
Still later, with M-G-M Parade averaging a 15 in the Nielsen competition on ABC, against 26 for Arthur Godfrey and His Friends and 23 for Father Knows Best, the agency fired another salvo. "We have taken a dim view of the show so far," a top agency executive stated, "and have had talks with M-G-M on improving the quality. We'd like to pitch in with our own people who know television."
Even the most enthusiastic movie man admits that neither the three new major studio shows nor two other new movie-influenced entries, Screen Directors Playhouse and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, have come anywhere near setting the TV audience on its ear.
"The plain fact of the matter," Vine St. regular remarked recently, "is that, for all the money and prestige the movie people brought continued to TV, they are still turning out just good, average shows. They have contributed little creative imagination."
The majors, however, are taking criticism of their TV product in stride.
"Our main problem," says Otto Lang, executive producer of The 20th Century-Fox Hour, "is the shortage of story material and the pressure of the time element to meet air dates. We never approached TV with the idea that it would be easy. We have approached it with the greatest concern. It is very difficult to merge expediency and economy with artistic integrity, or whatever you wish to call it."
Lang points out that a movie producer can take six months to develop a script from a story, whereas the TV producer has minutes. "But I hope," he adds, "I will never come to the point of accepting the script just for the sake of having one." He adds further, a trifle sadly, "We have a lot to learn, I guess."
Over at M-G-M, executive producer Les Petersen makes the same admission. "We're constantly experimenting to see what can be done to help," he says cheerfully. "Why, we've learned that a hilarious scene from a movie is suddenly not very funny when seen by just two or three people in a living room. So we've been experimenting with laugh tracks. And it hasn't been easy to learn how to lead into and out of the commercials, either. We're changing all the time. Every department in this whole studio is knocking itself out to help. They all seem to have the TV bug."
Petersen is quick, too, to say henever felt TV would be easy. "I respect anyone," he says flatly, "who can get so much as the title and the credits on the air in time."
While Warners is answering all queries with "No comment," the evidence seems to indicate that the major studios, while not having bitten off more than they can chew, have at least found the chewing much more complicated than they had envisioned. Artistic teeth accustomed to a leisurely diet of creamed chicken, as it were, have to adjust to the demands of a fast-broiled steak.
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