The Tube Takes Hold

In 1965, even as he was intensifying the bombing of North Viet Nam and the fighting in the South, Lyndon Johnson ordered a far-reaching escalation in the psy-war in Viet Nam. At the urging of CBS President Dr. Frank Stanton, just back from a visit to Saigon, Johnson decreed that there be television in South Viet Nam, not only to advance the struggle against the Communists, but also to contribute to the all-important task of "nation building." A few months later, two electronics-crammed Super Constellations beamed the first broadcast while circling over Saigon. Said one of the new network's Vietnamese bosses: "This is a better weapon than the M-16."

There is no mistaking the distinctive soft blue glow all over South Viet Nam these days. Puzzled Vietnamese peasants saw their first broadcasts on 2,500 sets donated by the U.S. and set up outdoors on stilts in hamlets and towns in and around Saigon. Now there are upwards of 350,000 sets, or one for every 50 Vietnamese. THVN--for Truyen Hinh (Transmission of Pictures) Viet Nam--has five stations. Broadcasting about six hours a day, mostly in the evening, they can reach 80% of South Viet Nam's 17 million people.

Hard-Sell. In the Delta, proud papa-sans festoon their hootches with TV antennas--the latest status symbol--even if they cannot get up the $175 price of the sets that go with them. In the power-short cities, the tube is almost too successful. In Saigon last month, THVN had to switch its madly popular Friday evening show, Cai Luong, a modern-dress Chinese opera, to a Sunday slot. With all of Saigon's factories and all of its TV sets going at the same hour on Friday, power sources were being dangerously overtaxed. "You could smell the electrical relays burning," says a power company official.

THVN is never less than 150% progovernment. Lieut. Colonel Le Van Duyen, the man in charge of the network and its modest, $375,000-a-year budget, is also Saigon's director of propaganda. He is convinced that "the best propaganda is TV." The network's U.S. advisers, an eleven-man group on loan from NBC International, are due to be phased out next spring under a sort of video Vietnamization program.

The hitch is that the South Vietnamese still have a lot to learn about using TV to turn on the people. News shows, put together by an overworked, underpaid ($17 a month) staff of six, are reasonably open for a country at war. Though no Vietnamese Fulbrights are ever seen on What the People Want to Know, Saigon's version of Meet the Press, the My Lai incident, to cite one example, was amply reported. Still, most of the fare is heavy and hard-sell. THVN does not run commercials, but slogans such as COMMUNISTS ARE BLOODTHIRSTY PEOPLE OR TO ACCEPT PEACE UNCONDITIONALLY IS SUICIDE, flash on during station breaks. Government ministries sponsor hortatory weekly series with resistible titles like The Voice of Mobilization. Vietnamese TV has yet to produce any stars. Even a Cronkite would have a tough time coming across on THVN newscasts, which are unaccountably aired with tunes like Mrs. Robinson and Love Is Blue as background music. Actors, too, find scant opportunity to shine in THVN's ersatz soap operas and sitcoms, which are long on doctrine and all too short on drama. Typical plot: North Vietnamese saboteur infiltrates the South, discovers that life under the Saigon government is not as bad as Hanoi has made it out to be, defects.

Silly Football. With no Nguyen Nielsens around to survey such things, no one knows precisely how THVN is faring in a ratings war with AFVN, the U.S. Armed Forces TV network. But it seems to be far behind. Mission: Impossible is the U.S. show most popular with the Vietnamese; until AFVN discontinued it, Batman also was near the top. Wrestling and boxing matches are popular, too, but not pro football, which the Vietnamese regard as silly.

THVN's audience troubles were documented not long ago when President Nguyen Van Thieu made a major televised address before the National Assembly. A South Vietnamese reporter conducted an informal poll and discovered that close to 90% of Saigon's viewers switched to one of the AFVN channels the minute Thieu came on.

If Thieu feels neglected, however, he is not alone. Mme. Nguyen Cao Ky, the fetching wife of Thieu's Vice President, has been heard to complain with some heat: "I am mad at my husband. In the day he's busy with official business; at night he's busy with Gunsmoke."

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