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Lehner: And his secretary is with him and this guy is making notations like a guy would. Writing. "Yeah." "No." "See me . . ."
Westbrook: "You're fired." Stuff like that. Lehner: And when the girl goes out of the room, he takes a leather portfolio, looks around, opens it up and starts doodling some very silly, funny little things. And the announcer says: "Introducing a new executive status symbol—Flair. To the casual observer, Flair is a dignified, serious, executive pen. But when you're alone, Flair reveals its true identity as the executive play pen. The greatest doodler in the world. This Christmas give him the executive play pen, Flair."
Westbrook: That's a great line! I think we ought to pretend like we got some new colors and see what we can do with it. Nathanson: What a television color commercial it could be, with fuchsias and, oh, I don't know, you name them. You know, orchid colors. You'll get women to write letters with orchid . . . Westbrook: You could have a black pen with white ink or a white pen with black ink. Sort of an integrated pen, you know. (Laughter.) It could be called "the soul pen."
Nathanson: Black paper!
Westbrook: With white ink! That's groovy!
Nathanson: With blue paper!
Westbrook: Purple paper with pink ink! Pink paper with purple ink!
Nathanson: Brown ink! We present them with a whole slew of marvelous ideas. Sealskin and alligator pens!
Westbrook: Phony fur pens! Wouldn't you love a fur pen? A mink pen? How about a tiger pen? Or a leopard pen? Would you believe an alligator pen?
Natkin: How about a grey flannel pen?
Westbrook: Grey flannel is out. How about a turtleneck pen?
(To learn what, if anything, resulted from this meeting, watch your TV set.) commercial, with entertainment simply an extension of the sales pitch. The networks become, in effect, just audience-delivery services. It is not that they are influenced by advertisers—they are psyched by them. In a classic episode, Chevrolet once changed the script of a western to read "crossing" instead of "fording" a river.
Such an incident is less likely now than it used to be (a recent Chevy commercial actually mentioned Ford by name). But it still remains indicative of a certain way of thinking by sponsors. With the exception of a few enlightened companies—among them Xerox, Hallmark, Bell Telephone and Western Electric—most advertisers still prefer to avoid controversial or specialinterest programs, and are happily led to the kind of show that provides the best frame for a sales pitch. Sometimes the frame and the picture merge completely, as when Clairol builds a beauty pageant around its commercials.
What can be done? Chances are that if everyone keeps his fingers crossed and buys the right products, the light-hearted uncommercials will spread and increasingly crowd the ugh-plugs off the air. But that is not enough. Another prospect is that the networks, goaded by viewer resentment, will move closer to the European scheme by having fewer but slightly longer commercial breaks. At present, with 9,000 new items appearing on the supermarket shelves each year, sponsors have started "clustering"—cramming more but shorter