CURIOSITY about the actual programmes which will be seen on commercial TV has, to a certain extent, been satisfied with some advance information.

But people are still wondering about the advertising spots; maybe they are even apprehensive, remembering the brash quick-fire methods used in America and which have been featured in films from time to time.

I set out to discover the answer, and here it is. Point No. 1 is that the idea behind them all is that they shall entertain.

How often shall we see the ad. spots? Out of every sixty minutes, six will be taken up by advertising, and those responsible will do all in their power to make certain that you do not leave your sets during the brief moments when commodities are on the air.

Many well-known personalities have been signed up to sell various goods apart from Sooty: Tommy Trinder, Derek Roy and Richard Murdoch are some of the big names who will be appearing regularly but, and this is important, their message, although designed to sell the same article, will vary. You will not be able to complain, “I’ve seen all this before.” Neither will the personality who has been appearing in the previous programme be seen on the advertising spot. When this minute is up, the next programme will follow and so on.

The Golden Rules

Some of you may be puzzled by this, particularly if you are regular listeners to Luxembourg. There each programme is known by the manufacturer’s name as the Such and Such half-hour. This will not happen on commercial TV.

The time when a commercial will appear will be of importance. For instance, an advertiser would prefer to have his message put across to you at a time when more viewers are able to watch, or just before or after a particularly good programme. For this privilege they will have to pay more — but, and this is the important point, the advertiser cannot demand the same time each week, or the ability to precede a certain programme.

What are you going to see in the ad. spots? The whole operation is being kept secret at the moment, for each advertiser wants to gain the impact of surprise. What are the golden rules of holding your interest and selling a product at the same time? Listen to what Richard King of TV Advertising has to say:

“Firstly, my intention is to establish the fact that it is an advertisement from the very beginning of the spot. We have grown out of the days when it was thought clever to fool the public by giving them pure entertainment for 95 per cent of the show and then plugging the commodity in the last 5 per cent. When an audience sees this at a cinema, haven’t you heard the ripple of laughter and the jeers?”

I agreed. He then went on to say that some of the commercials he is producing will be in the form of animated cartoons drawn by those two clever people, Halas and Batchelor, who produced Animal Farm. “The advantage of cartoons,” said Richard King, “is that they bear repetition more than dramatic incidents.” Finally I asked him what the advantage would be of having a star selling the product.

“There’s been a lot of nonsense spoken about stars thinking selling is beneath them,” he said. “When the style of product demands a star then we shall use one. After all, they’ve reached the top because they are good personalities and good actors.

“When we want them and can afford them then we shall use them to good advantage.” Then he added: “Equally when the occasion rises we shall use unknowns. Each will have his or her purpose.”

Next I met Don Archer of Bantock Productions — an Englishman who went to America and then started a TV Company in London to advise agencies and their clients on the right way to produce commercials.

He doesn’t believe in stars. He says: “When you have a star, the public know that the star is being paid to sell the product and they immediately tend to disbelieve the message.

“The object of a commercial is to sell sincerely — to point out why this article is better than that one. In other words, to appeal to the viewers’ common sense.”

He went on to say that the ideal way of advertising on television is to let the product speak for itself. There is no need to have a demonstrator if the article is shown. For instance, if it is a refrigerator, the viewer can sit back and see this shelf and that storage compartment with just a voice explaining how it works.

“Relaxed” is a word Don Archer uses constantly. “Believability” is another — by this he means that overselling is as much a crime as underselling. He really believes that commercial television will act as a general stimulus to the country. People will see more things that they want and will work harder to get them.

He categorically states that the power of advertising is the basic cause of the high standard of living in the States and he believes that, in time, it will have a similar effect over here.

He also says that what is good advertising for the London area will not appeal in the North and has opened an office in Manchester to advise people up there along those lines.

I have seen quite a few of these commercial spots and whether they have been cartoons, dramatic episodes or song jingles they have been entertaining and all in the best of good taste. In this country a very strict code of ethics rules advertising and it has been observed and upheld strictly on television.

£1,000 a Minute

Celebrities will rub shoulders with unknowns and remembering how you, the viewers, have promoted some of the BBC’s television announcers into nationwide personalities, it is amusing to speculate who, from the many unknowns of today, you will have elevated to a similar status in a few months’ time.

And here is a final thought. The cost of filming an average one minute commercial works out at about £400 [£8,350 in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] — and this is one that does not employ a star. A cartoon costs more than £1,000 [£21,000]. In many cases this is more money than many a half hour show costs, so there seems little doubt that with not only the ITA programmes and the commercials but also the BBC’s counter-attack ones, you are going to find it very hard to leave your sets and select a time to make your tea and sandwiches.

I only hope none of you will starve to death for the sake of entertainment!

The post What will the ad spots be like? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1950s from Transdiffusion.

A cheap novel, a cheap author, but a true if trite statement on page thirty-seven: ‘You got talent, you got looks but you ain’t got a gimmick … and without a gimmick you’re lost, son … go home, find yourself a gimmick.’

There are two types of success stories: the long hard grind – and overnight fame. Occasionally one follows the other. More often the gimmick leads to the second in, if we may quote the same novel, ‘a great big hurry’. Successful TV gimmick shows are the give-away programmes, audience participation games, the panel games with that extra ‘something’ which makes them click.

What is a gimmick? Johnnie Ray’s cry is a gimmick; Winifred Atwell’s other piano is a gimmick, and well – now you know what we mean. In the case of the quiz show one is led to believe that the word is an abbreviation of ‘gimme’ or ‘gimme quick’.

Having accepted the premise that a gimmick is something worth having, let us examine a few of the gimmick shows.

Pride of place must go to the fabulous The 64,000 Question, ATV first showed this programme on May 19th, 1956. The whole show was based on a lowest common multiple of sixpence. Now, a sign either of inflation or of the increasing prosperity of Independent Television the show works in multiples of a shilling. Answer eleven very hard questions accurately and you can leave the studio, after five appearances, with £3,200 in your pocket – or, if you accept the Val Parnell bonus and take the whole amount in Defence Bonds, £3,520 – and a halo of national fame gleaming over your head.

The English show is based on the world-famous American The $64,000 Question. The main differences between the two programmes are that Hal March comperes the American version and Jerry Desmonde the English one; the English show is transmitted on Saturday night and the American on Tuesday evening; and whereas our 64,000 shillings aren’t taxable, their 64,000 dollars are! In the United States they have police to guard the safe containing the money. In this country ex-Superintendent Fabian of the Yard performs the same function, and is one of the many precautions which are taken to preserve the integrity of the show.

All sorts of people can achieve fame overnight through this competition. In America, a woman doctor of psychology won 64,000 dollars by answering questions on boxing, a railway porter won a huge prize for his knowledge of astronomy, and a parson impressed the nation with his expert knowledge of – jazz! A twelve-year-old school girl (she won umpteen thousand dollars spelling ‘Antidisestablishmentarianism’), a marine captain (on cooking), a coalminer (on the Bible) – all have been big winners.

Such people are the life-blood of the show. Questions are far from easy, stakes are high and contestants cannot answer questions on a subject from which they earn their living. The publicity around the show is enormous and needless to say the winners have many lucrative offers. Viewing figures are vast – in America the sponsors can really boast that the programme stops the country’s activity for the half hour that it is on.

In the near future it is hoped that there will be a challenge competition between the winners in America and the winners in this country. A battle of giants, indeed.

A great deal of the popularity of the show can be traced to its simplicity. From the first to last questions the cash prize doubles itself. Thus in England the first question is for 64/-, the second for 128/- and so on to 64,000/-.

The first major excitement of the British version came when Vernon Goslin, a forty-two year old schoolmaster, answered six of the seven parts of the 64,000 question, only to fail at the last part. There have been a great many excitements since then. For example, there was the day when Ashley Neville Stacey, a schoolmaster from Bexley Heath, reached 64,000, with his wife and five children there to watch him, only to find the last Biblical question too difficult for him. A couple of weeks later, Albert Norman, a 65 year-old retired diamond setter from Normany, Surrey, became the first person to overcome the final hurdle and walk away from the studio with £1,760 worth of Defence Bonds in his pocket.

Shortly after this there was great excitement when the top prize was doubled and contestants began trying for £3,200.

On Saturday, 13th October, 73 year-old Miss Jane Brown staked her reputation as a Dickens scholar on winning the big prize. She won all right, and with £3,520 in Defence Bonds this gentle old Victorian lady went home to Wolverhampton, her black cat, and her organ which she bought in a jumble sale. Self-taught in shorthand, Miss Brown has thirty pupils who were, no doubt, among the millions who sighed with relief when the final question was answered.

Many of the contestants in this country become singularly attached to the show, and it is not unusual to see half a dozen or more ex-competitors appear on the screen when producer John Irwin turns the cameras to spotlight audience reaction.

Another exciting money game is Beat the Clock, which features regularly in Sunday Night at the London Palladium. It is compered by the breezy comedian, Tommy Trinder, and relies for its impact on the participants being willing to undertake some pretty gruelling ordeals. Bursting balloons by sitting on them (blindfold, to make matters more difficult) is one of them. Another involves running six laps of the stage, eating a roll at the end of the first lap, drinking a glass of milk at the end of the second, playing hoopla at the end of the third, bursting a balloon with a dart, riding a hobby-horse and so on – all six laps to be completed within a minute.

Viewers have been amazed at the variety and ingenuity of the actual problems posed in this game. They find themselves asking what kind of diabolical mind would think of asking contestants wearing divers’ boots to burst balloons by jumping on them; what kind of sadist would expect his victims to stack cups of tea with their hands encased in boxing gloves. The answer to these questions is producer David Main, who selects the ordeals from among those used for the same game in the United States.

At any time during the fourteen minutes’ duration of Beat the Clock a bell may ring – the bell which means it’s jackpot time! All contestants immediately stop their efforts to win television sets, refrigerators, washing machines and motor cycles and concentrate on winning some hard cash with an even more difficult problem than dancing on balloons with leaden boots. The jackpot question often involves real skill; bouncing four balls into four boxes placed one above the other on a pole, for example. The jackpot has been won at varying values. On two of the first three occasions the prizes of £1,100 and £1,300 were the highest ever to have been awarded on British television. The lucky winners? A honeymoon couple and a sailor on leave with his wife.

Hit the Limit is a show which began life from Midlands transmitters only, but because of its popularity was soon being relayed from London as well. Announcer Peter Cockburn got his lucky break in this programme when its M.C. Jerry Desmonde, vacated the star-role to make a film with Norman Wisdom.

Hit the Limit is not really an intelligence test, for the questions are simple and the whole atmosphere is that of a brisk fairground. The basic idea is that competitors throw a dart at a revolving wheel which contains a V-shaped ‘jackpot section’ – total area 95 square inches, or one-twelfth of the board. According to which section the dart sticks in, questions are asked and cash prizes awarded. The value of the jackpot increases by £50 each week.

If ever a show had a gimmick it is the highly controversial Yakity Yak – The Dizzy Show. Why controversial? You should just see the mail that pours into ATV. It would appear that half the viewers want to send the girls who participate to the Siberian salt mines, and the rest would like to see them enthroned on pedestals of gold for having achieved the ultimate in feminine pulchritude.

This programme was based on an observation which Michael Pertwee made almost every time he met a woman. ‘They never admit they are ignorant of any particular fact,’ he told Leslie Goldberg, the executive producer, one day. Out of these ten little words came one of the most genuinely funny shows seen on television.

The recipe was simple enough. Choose four beautiful girls, put them on a panel, add one MacDonald Hobley if the programme is to be seen in London, or one Michael Pertwee if it is broadcast to the Midlands. Select ten or so words which sound as though they might mean something they don’t and ask the girls to explain them. The girls must give an answer, and it must never be, ‘I don’t know’.

The result has sent shivers up and down the spines of the erudite gentlemen who compile the Oxford English Dictionary; has made viewers incredulous that even a very dumb blonde could think a toupee was an abbreviated two-piece, or a Bombay Duck a duck with an extra long leg; and has caused a great many people the heartiest of belly laughs. And of course it has given the Press the chance to publish even more pictures of girls with trim figures and cute faces.

John Irwin who produces the show added another gimmick. At the end of each programme the girls were asked to discuss a debatable topic. This resulted in brain machinery working overtime. The girls produced such classic remarks as: ‘Men are so stupid – whenever I want to read what’s going on in Cyprus they are reading the sports page. That’s why I hate travelling in Undergrounds…”

A last word on the gimmick. If you can think of one which ATV could use, send it to them, they’re always looking out for fresh ideas.

The post The Gimmick Shows appeared first on THIS IS MY 1950s from Transdiffusion.