Standing Room Only

The touring Kefauver committee last week made its triumphant return to Washington, leaving behind it a rash of probes, citizen crime investigations, red faced politicians, some civic firings, and a limp, but still eager, audience. It was a fortnight that had rocked the nation. In Chicago, hardy viewers shifted from foot to foot in 15DEG weather as they watched the hearings through TV-store windows. In Minneapolis, bars and restaurants with TV sets were thronged even in the mornings. In New York, the Consolidated Edison Co. had to switch on an extra generator to carry the daytime load of TV sets.

The hearings set off unexpected tremors across the nation. Department stores, groceries, movies and even Manhattan taxis lost business. Local legislators, impressed by the ease with which Kefauver and Tobey had become household names, hoped to reap similar vote-getting benefits by making TV appearances themselves.

Was the show a town meeting or a circus? Some observers thought they were seeing an awakened and outraged citizenry. But in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Columnist Ollie Crawford argued: "The Romans were right--there's no show like watching people thrown to the lions. " Manhattan radio station WNEW hired Psychologist Ernest Dichter to explain it all. He concluded that the hearings were supersoap opera: "The pure and wonderful hero was Kefauver, the 'Just Plain Bill' was righteous, moralistic Senator Tobey . . . As a psychologist, I wonder if it was a desire to feel superior that so fascinated the millions of us who heard Virginia Hill."

It was generally conceded that the TV industry had done a good, workmanlike job. But some critics worried about hippodrome tendencies, e.g., when WPIX Commentator Harry Brundidge, at the end of Frank Costello's testimony, rushed to the witness stand and begged the leather-faced Costello to smile for the TV audience, the TV cameras left the Senate committee high & dry until Costello graciously obliged. That the committee itself felt some uneasiness was indicated this week when Wisconsin's Senator Alexander Wiley suggested that the Senate Rules Committee make a thorough study of the question of televising congressional proceedings.

What most concerned TVmen (and those who supply their financial lifeblood) was another question: If television is about to be flooded with congressional probers and legislative debates, how will they be sponsored? More important, what will happen to the ratings of the commercial shows that try to compete with such compelling, real-life drama? So far, a Manhattan adman had the only answer: "If the Washington circus keeps going, competing shows will have to be taken off the air. It just doesn't pay to go on for an audience of about ten people."

*Compared with 107 very-high-frequency stations now in operation.

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