The Busy Air

P:Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who in their old movie days met and fell in love at the RKO Studios, were well on their way last week to owning a big memento of their pre-TV past: the RKO lot itself. As bosses of TV's thriving Desilu Productions (I Love Lucy, Our Miss Brooks, December Bride), the couple offered about $6,000,000 for RKO's 15-stage lot in Hollywood plus its eleven-stage studios in Culver City and its valuable stock footage library. The deal--perhaps the most dramatic example yet of TV's upstaging the movies in their own backyard --is being "finalized" with the General Tire & Rubber Co., which bought the RKO properties two years ago from Howard Hughes for $25 million. Desilu plans to devote the studios to more of the kind of TV production that has put RKO out of the movie business.

P:Two of TV's laurel-hung veterans closed a chapter. In Hollywood, after only a year of a three-year NBC contract, Producer-Director Fred Coe announced that he was quitting the network. Said Coe, who developed such playwrights as Paddy Chayefsky and Horton Foote, and put on Television Playhouse, Producer's Showcase and Mr. Peepers: "Plans and ideas that I have submitted have either been ignored or have drawn no interest. On the other hand, I have been given no assignment. A silent telephone on your desk is a terrible thing." In Manhattan, after seven successful years in daily morning TV, CBS's Garry Moore announced that he would end the daytime show next fall. Said Moore, who plans to keep going in I've Got a Secret and to explore other TV areas: "I feel I will have done all I can do creatively on the morning show. If I were to continue with it, I would be doing it just for the buck. In 22 years of broadcasting, I've never worked just for a buck." Set loose to search for a buck: 94 writers, performers and other staffmen of the morning show.

P:While FCC scanned the air waves for any trace of an adman's use of "subliminal perception" in a pitch to the viewer's subconscious mind (TIME, Nov. 18). one TV station announced that it has been trying the technique for two months. WTWO in Bangor, Me. superimposes the suggestion "Write W-TWO" once every eleven seconds on certain of its TV shows, in a flash too swift for conscious perception. The station promised to keep FCC posted on the experiment; so far, a spokesman admitted, the results in the station's mail volume have been as subliminal as the message. But the trade weekly Broadcasting found two radio stations that reported success with a similar method: short announcements slipped quietly into natural pauses or over a musical background. Not really subliminal, they are consciously perceptible--but just barely. KLTI in Longview, Texas calls these commercials "Radio Active Iso-Spots," explains: "They get in underneath and spotlight attention, just like an isotope in medicine."

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