Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...bring the Floyd Patterson-Hurricane Jackson fight (see SPORT) into focus for America's armchair fans last week over NBC, the Buick Motor Division of General Motors forked out about $250,000. What it got for its money was as distasteful as the fight itself. Between rounds, a glassy-eyed young pitchman trundled before the viewing public one dull, lumpy Buick "salesman" after another. Wearing Panama hats, they muttered mostly about this being a dandy time to get a good deal on a Buick. The clincher came at the fight's crucial moment. As Referee Ruby Goldstein snaffled...
...growing headaches: it is constantly caught in the middle by the slings and arrows of outraged viewers-individuals and organized groups. This is an occupational hazard long familiar to Hollywood, which learned how sensitive all kinds of minorities can be to slurs, real or imagined. An avalanche of mail (NBC alone gets 3,000,000 letters a year) has convinced network executives that TV, because it shares the privacy of the viewer's home, seems to give offense and draw abuse even more readily...
...Dirty Digs." Nothing seems too trifling to pink a sensibility. NBC's files contain a letter in behalf of leather-jacket manufacturers, protesting the jacket's use as "a sort of TV shorthand" for juvenile hoodlums. In Kansas the Independence Reporter ran an editorial accusing the networks of airing "dirty little nonsensical digs" at Kansas. Wrote a Pittsburgh physician: "Why is it that whenever a TV situation calls for a pharmacist he is always a doddering old incompetent?" Complained a Las Vegas waitress: "Something [should] be done about always depicting a waitress as a hardboiled, gum-chewing, illiterate...
...NBC all the complaints find their way to Stockton Helffrich, 45, who as head of the network's continuity acceptance department also wields the censor's pencil. Says Helffrich: "If every special interest were to constitute a new entry in a list of taboos, we'd have to go out of business." Helffrich, like CBS's Herbert A. Carlborg, carefully weighs each beef and tries, where justified and feasible, to do something about it. For example, he makes writers, producers and directors aware of complaint trends and of requests by such groups as the American Foundation...
...Comedian Sid Caesar announced last week that he had patched up two old breaks: 1) he telephoned Imogene Coca, his original mate on Your Show of Shows, and in a tear-choked chat won her consent to their TV reunion; 2) he called NBC, which he left in a huff in May because the network could find no sponsors for the costly ($110,000 a week), rating-laggard Caesar's Hour, TV's best comedy show. Subdued, after almost two months of contemplating a new season without him, Caesar offered to render unto NBC a "reasonably" priced half...