The Single Sponsor Syndrome
by Elise Vidler
Single sponsored programing was a technique of advertising transferred over from radio to television. This technique involved a lone corporate sponsor that would purchase large blocks of set air time, then hire an advertisement agency to create persuasive programing. This technique flourished between 1947 and 1958, it was considered the norm for almost all television advertisement. As television became more popular, advertisement agencies and corporate sponsors sought to capitalize on the new medium. It was as if televisual advertisement was the new rugged frontier in marketing. A frontier ripe for exploitation. The focus and purpose of single sponsored programming was to manipulate the corporate public image to their favor. By enforcing the status quo they were able to meticulously control every aspect of their sponsored program. Millions upon millions of dollars were poured into market and social (psychological) research through advertisement agencies, in an attempt to sway the market in their favor.
The novelty of the medium lends itself to the necessity of experimentation. Programming was designed by ad agencies for corporate sponsors. Sponsors had ultimate control over the content of the program. The networks had nothing or at least very little to do with the programming put on by the sponsors. Ad agencies selected the writers, talent, and production crew. Programming of this time, often reflected “dead-centerism” and would not allow writers to venture into any subject matter that may reflect anything other than positive middle-class values. Programs or scripts that strayed away from that material or tried to explore social or political controversies were swept under the rug. Writers who tried to bring public attention to scripting disagreements could often loose their jobs. Scripts were constantly being edited by the sponsor. In one case, Reginald Rose’s Thunder on Sycamore Street, which was aired by CBS had to be rewritten. Apparently the protagonist, a black family, would have to be changed. The ad agency, CBS, and the sponsor all agreed that the thought of a “negro” protagonist would be impossible, it would in fact “appall southern viewers.” The script was eventually changed and a white ex-con became the protagonist.
Talent was also often edited by the sponsor. One very good example of this talent editing was Jean Muir, a stage actress. Muir had been cast by Young and Rubicam (one of the most powerful and influential advertisement agencies of the 1950′s) to play the mother in The Aldrich Family. Just three days before the premier she was notified that her contract had been canceled. General Foods, who was the sponsor of the program, had received numerous phone calls protesting her casting. People believed her to be a communist sympathizer. Red Channels, published by Counterattack, had listen Muir with having nine separate associations with organizations linked to communism. Without any investigation General Foods fired her. They wanted to avoid controversial people being shown on their program.
The Ford Motor Company had not been so lucky in avoiding such an incident. In 1950 Ed Sullivan scheduled Paul Draper, a prominent dancer for his show Talk of the Town later know as The Ed Sullivan Show (aired on CBS 1948-1971). Multiple letters had been sent in that demanded that the Ford Motor company cancel the appearance due to Drapers alleged communist sympathies. Nonetheless Ford decided to proceed. Over a thousand angry letters poured into Ford, in order for Ford to save face they decided to make Ed Sullivan write a public relations letter to Kenyon and Eckhardt (another very prominent advertisement agency). The letter also served as a press release. Another great example of sponsors dictating aspects of their program was on the Camel News Caravan (aired NBC 1949-1956). Camel sent down a request (order) that no news persona could be shown smoking a cigar, except Winston Churchhill. Shots of “no smoking” signs were prohibited. During the run of Man Against Crime (aired on CBS 1949-1953, then DuMont 1953-1954, and finally NBC 1953-1956), Camel sent out an another order that stated to the writers “Do not have any heavy or any disreputable person smoking a cigarette. Do not associate the smoking of cigarettes with undesirable scenes or situations plot-wise.” It also contained strict instructions on how a character should smoke a cigarette. Cigarettes must never be “puffed nervously” or given to to a character to “calm his nerves”. The sponsors feared that if a cigarette was given to “calm nerves” it might imply a narcotic effect. None of these would look favorable for the sponsors image.
The marketing and social research of the time, which had been fed millions of dollars by these same corporate sponsors, had come to the conclusion that if you subjected your audience to the same logo or jingle repeatedly they would become conditioned. Thus making them “creatures of conditioned reflex” and far more likely to become brand loyal (repetition breeds comfort.) They also found that seven out of ten purchases made were made on impulse. By conditioning shoppers to their brand consumers were more likely to be triggered by their “conditioned reflex” and buy the product. This technique was used in almost every single sponsored program from 1947 to 1958 and is still heavily being used to this day. There are no accidental flashes of the sponsor’s products or name, everything was and is planned. Early on sponsors where trying to find the most cost effective way to gain “brand loyal” viewers. An early solution was to simply put the name of the product or corporation into the title of the program it was producing. Some of the early experiments of this are: Kraft Television Theater (aired on NBC, 1947-1958), The Texaco Star Theater (aired on NBC, 1948-1956), Camel News Caravan (aired on NBC, 1949-1956), The Colgate Comedy Hour (aired on NBC, 1950-1955), Your Lucky Strike Theatre (aired on NBC, 1950-1957), The U.S. Steel Hour (aired on ABC 1953-1955, then CBS 1955-1963), and The Timex All Star Jazz Review (aired on CBS, 1957-1959). Besides having the title of the corporation in the title of the show, the Lucky Strikes ad men also found it necessary to put at least six minutes of commercial time devoted to promoting the sponsor’s brand in with the program. As with Lucky Strikes, Timex had their spokesman, John Cameron Swayze, tell the home audience “Television is modern…Timex watches are also modern in every way.” Some of the programs listed above even had theme songs blatantly promoting the sponsors product. The best example of this comes from The Texaco Star Theater which would open every week with the Texaco quartet singing:
“Oh, we’re the men of Texaco
We work from Maine to Mexico
There’s nothing like this Texaco of ours!
Our show is very powerful We’ll wow you with an hour full
Of howls from a shower full of stars.
We’re the merry Texaco men
Tonight we may be showmen
Tomorrow we’ll be servicing your cars!
We wipe your pipe
We pump your gas
We jack your back
We scrub your glass
So join the ranks of those who know And fill your tanks with Texaco
Fire Chief, fill up with Fire Chief, You will smile at the pile of new miles you will add
Sky Chief, fill up with Sky Chief
You’ll find that Texaco’s the finest friend your car has ever had.”
At the end of the show the quartet would come back on to ask you “please be loyal to our brand, gasoline, and oil.”
The cigarette company, Phillip Morris paid $30,000 a week as a single sponsor for the show I Love Lucy (aired on CBS, 1951-1957). Coincidentally enough Lucy and her husband Ricky were often shown smoking Phillip Morris brand cigarettes during the show. In addition to the main characters being shown smoking Phillip Morris products, packs of Phillip Morris cigarettes were often left in obvious or eye catching frames on the screen, label showing of course. The same tactic was used by Camel in the show Man Against Crime. The main character, Mike Barnet, was often shown smoking a Camel and occasionally would flash the pack, yet again with the label facing the camera. At the end of the show, Mike would list off various military bases and veteran hospitals to which “the makers of Camels will be sending cigarettes to this week”.
Don’t be fooled, cigarette companies were not alone in the product placement game. Carnation evaporated milk was also a heavy user of this persuasion trickery. In Carnation’s sponsored show The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (aired CBS, 1950-1958) Carnation evaporated milk was a regularly seen object. In one episode Gracie even makes a joke about Carnation, “How did they milk all those carnations?” Some sponsors were a little more obvious than Phillip Morris, Camel , and Carnation. Chrysler and DeSoto sponsored a quiz show called You Bet Your Life (aired NBC, 1950-1961). The host was Groucho Marx. The sponsor’s logo was visible right from the get go and stayed visible throughout the episode. The cherry on top was at the end of the show. Groucho would stick his head through a hole in the Chrysler-DeSoto sign and say “Friends go in and see your DeSoto-Plymouth dealer tomorrow and when you do, tell ‘em Groucho sent you.” Subtle? Not one bit.
Howdy Doody (aired NBC, 1947-1960) on the other hand was incredibly subtle. As a show that was marketed towards children, Howdy Doody slipped in messages to buy new toys and to drink Ovaltine. Millions of dollars had been spent by ad agencies and corporations, to determine the viability of advertising directly to children. Joseph Seldin, a writer for The Nation, once wrote “Manipulation of children’s minds in the field of religion or politics would touch off a parental storm of protest and a rash of Congressional investigations. But in the world of commerce children are fair game and legitimate prey.” The most successful ploy was using children to sway adult buying habits in 1955, when Howdy Doody began broadcasting in color. NBC, who aired the program, was owned by RCA, the makers of color televisions. When the program switched to color, market researchers saw an astronomically huge rise of color television sales among people whom had children. Howdy Doody was brilliantly being used as a gimmick by RCA to sell its new line of color television sets via a child’s persuasion over their parents. Herb Sheldon, a children’s television star, stated in 1956 “I don’t say that children should be forced to harass their parents into buying products they’ve seen advertised on television, but at the same time I cannot close my eyes to the fact that it’s being done every day.” Children’s advertisement of today still holds true to much of the information, techniques, and research gathered from social research, Howdy Doody, and other children’s shows of its time.
The quiz show craze of the 1950′s was kick started by the smash sensation The $64,000 Question (aired by CBS 1955-1958). The premise of the quiz show was to ask the contestants a set of questions. Contestants started with $1 but with every question the contestant answered successfully their money doubled. The winner was asked to come back the next week to try and rack up more prize money. The real kick of the show was the sheer amount prize money a single contestant could win. Even the loosing contestant was still rewarded with a brand new Cadillac, a concept that had yet to be explored by network television. The show which was sponsored by Revlon, was an over night success. It sent waves of lucrative product sales crashing back into Revlon’s pockets. A metaphoric gold rush ensued. Soon others joined the band wagon. The 1957-1958 season had over twenty-two network quiz shows, the number had more than doubled in just three seasons. Some examples of copycat quiz show programs are: The $64,000 Challenge (aired on CBS, 1955-1958), Do You Trust Your Wife? (aired on ABC, 1957-1963), Twenty-One (aired on NBC, 1956-1958),and The $100,000 Big Surprise (aired on NBC 1956-1958). This type of programing was very popular among sponsors and ad agencies. Not only was it cheap to produce, in a time of ever climbing production costs but it simply sold products. Programming of this type made great use of exploiting conditioned reflexes among viewers. The repetitiveness of the show and the constant viewing of the sponsors logo or name helped cement brand loyalty into the potential consumer.
Unfortunately for the general public whom watched these quiz shows, most were rigged. This was the largest scandal of early television history! Herb Stempel who had been a losing contestant on Twenty-One, was the first to blow the whistle on the fixing of quiz shows in 1958. At first everyone assumed Stempel was just a sore looser. Help came in the form of a former Twenty-One contestant. This former contestant had been cautiously sending himself registered letters with the results of his appearances predicted in advance. Stempel who had been unpopular among viewers, had been instructed by the producers of the show to take a dive. He did what he was told and purposely botched a relatively easy answer. Contestants whom were producing low ratings or considered dull were to be removed as soon as possible. This order came from the highest level on authority, the sponsor. At weekly meetings the vice president of Revlon, who sponsored The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge would make it well know which contestant he wanted to win that week. The scandal sent shock waves through American homes. People began to wonder if other items on television such as images or sounds were as real as they had been led to believe. Canned laughter became a center of controversies. While canned laughter had been in use for a number of years before the quiz show scandal, people were beginning to question it. It was discovered early on by ad agencies that people are more likely to laugh if they hear other people laughing. Many shows had used it including The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, The Ozzie and Harriet Show (aired on ABC, 1952-1966), and I Love Lucy. I Love Lucy had actually developed a machine that could produce around one hundred different kinds of laughs. The quiz show scandal and the sudden realization that all my not be as it seemed on television, had rocked the viewers trust of network television. More importantly it had forced the networks to reevaluate their current relationship with the practice of single sponsored programing.
One man in particular had been treading and popularizing the idea of more network vs. sponsor control. Sylvester L. “Pat” Weaver a known lover of the arts, had once been vice president at the Young and Rubicam advertisement agency. In 1949 Weaver left his position at Young and Rubicam in order to head television activities at NBC. By 1953 Weaver had become president of NBC. He kept a watchful eye and helped develop NBC’s entire programing philosophy. He constantly lobbied and pushed for the end of single sponsored programing. Weaver was a strong believer in the “magazine concept” of advertisement. The “magazine concept” or spot advertising as it’s known today is the method of selling small thirty or sixty seconds long blocks of air time. Instead of having a single sponsor pay for one large block of time, spot advertising allowed for small blocks of time to be purchased by the sponsor. The network produces and controls the programming making it far more economical for sponsors who want to spread out their message to a wider audience without having to heavily invest in tailored made programing. With the use of spot advertising sponsors would be able to put their commercials on several different networks at numerous times of the day and reach a far greater audience for a considerably lower cost. Weaver believed that limiting the sponsors control of the programing would allow for more creativity and further revenue all the way around. He aggressively pushed for institutional change. The Today Show (aired on NBC, 1952-present) and The Tonight Show (aired NBC, 1954-present) were Weavers earliest and most successful examples of programs that were totally financed by spot advertising. “There is some advantage,” Weaver once said “ in having your enemy on your own payroll.”
The time of the all mighty iron-fisted single sponsor was coming to an end. Many artists in the television world were giddy with excitement. Eagerly awaiting the next step in the evolution of commercial television. The ever climbing price of program production, network’s raising their price on air time, the quiz show scandal, Weaver’s more popular rivaling spot advertisement, and the viewers ever growing distrust had been the nails driven deep into the coffin of single sponsored programing. In late 1959 Business Week magazine reports the end of single sponsored programing. By the early 1960′s single sponsored programing had all but vanished.
In summary, single sponsored programming dominated the commercial television industry as long as the industry would allow. Ultimately, their attempts to control all aspects of programming stifled creativity. Among the techniques employed included “dead centerism,” the need to constantly be within the center of public opinion, manipulating creative content and hidden persuasion techniques, which led to massive distrust among the public. Even though the public became distrustful, advertisers continue to utilize these building blocks in current advertising. The technological experimentation started crudely, however through repetition became quite sophisticated. The use of the three camera studio, the utilization of product placement and the advent of color television have each contributed to the exploitation of the public. In short, single sponsored programming was a necessary and viable evil, which shaped the landscape of television today.