Film v. Live Shows

"The Kraft TV Theater comes to you live from New York. The play is being performed at the moment you see it--living theater is your best television entertainment." This announcement, read as each Kraft show comes on the air, dramatizes weekly the struggle for supremacy between live and filmed TV. It points up the fear of the TV networks, as well as that of the Manhattan producers of live shows, that they are about to be swallowed up by Hollywood. At first, almost all television was live. Now one third of sponsored network shows are on film, and the percentage is growing. Such TV film-makers as Hal Roach Jr., Ziv,

Don Sharpe, Frank Wisbar and Desilu have built their business from scratch to a $50-million industry.

Last year Hollywood, which makes 78% of TV's film (the rest is shot in Manhattan and Europe), provided 3,500,000 feet of film for TV's consumption. Eight onetime movie studios are now devoted almost entirely to TV. Of all the millions of feet of negative sold by Eastman Kodak to the movie industry, nearly 70% goes to television. Though the general quality of IV films is low, the two most popular TV programs in the U.S.--I Love Lucy and Dragnet--are on film.

Actor's Muff. On one level, the film v. live-TV fight is an artistic squabble. Producers and directors of such live shows as Studio One, U.S. Steel Hour and Philco Goodyear TV Playhouse argue that the theaterlike thrill of live TV cannot be captured on film, and that live performances hold more excitement and spontaneity. Replies Film-Maker Hal Roach-"Who wants to see a stagehand in the wrong place, or hear an actor muff his lines? That's what spontaneity means."

The networks are in the fight for financial reasons. With a live program that can be performed only once, TV stations usually must belong to a network if they are to carry the show. But filmed TV can be sold direct by the film-makers to individual stations. Not wanting to be pushed out into the cold, the networks have fought back. NBC's Vice President John K. West says of TV film: "Keep it the hell off the networks." CBS's Vice President Harry Ackerman says: "We are primarily in the live TV business. We definitely wanted to shoot I Love Lucy live.

But the sponsor made us go to film You can say that we go into the film business at the whim of the sponsor."

46 Survivors. Since film has been forced on them, the networks have moved to capture another middleman function: distribution. NBC, CBS and ABC are organized to sell reruns of their TV films to advertisers and independent TV stations. Says NBC Film Division's Director Ted Sisson: "A few big distributors are eventually going to control the industry." Some filmed shows, such as Victory at Sea, have higher ratings on their second runs than on their firsts. Others, e.g., Hopalong Cassidy, have been re-run as many as five times in the same city.

Hal Roach's production this year will top the combined footage of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 20th Century-Fox and Warner Bros. Right from the first, says Roach "it was plain that this hungry TV medium could only be fed with film." But the casualties were high. Banks refused to lend money. The major studios refused to let their stars appear in TV shows. Of some 500 embryo TV filmmakers, only 46 survive, and only half a dozen make sizable profits. Roach aims solely at producing entertainment by assembly-line methods, says: "It's like the auto business."

Roach made 98 films of Racket Squad sold them to a sponsor, but just barely made expenses ("I was banking on the fact that I could show the films again and cash in"). He won his gamble by reselling the films to the ABC network for $1,000,000. He has 30 writers hard at work on three on-the-air series (Public Defender, Duffy's Tavern, My Little Margie) and seven new programs.

Nothing in the immediate future is likely to be decisive in the struggle between live and film TV. Color TV will probably be taken in stride by both sides. Electronic tape, due in from two to five years, seems to promise advantages to everyone!

Like most such struggles, live v. filmed TV may end up as an uneasy compromise. Says one TV producer: "Believe me, there's room in this business for everyone. We can have live and film and tape and color. Just as long as nobody wants the whole pot."

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