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What Is a Network? Viewers who hear the familiar NBC chimes and see the familiar linked initials are apt to think of "the network" as a solid entity. But few know what a network really is. Strictly speaking, as Bob Kintner puts it, it is "programs and a lot of telephone wire." The wire (44,000 miles, rented from A.T.&T. at $17.4 million a year) loosely holds together NBC's five wholly owned stations (by FCC ruling, no individual or corporation may own more than seven radio or TV outlets), plus 207 independently owned affiliates with which NBC has contracts to furnish a certain number of programs. The network's 165 cameras in 31 Manhattan and Hollywood studios, its 6,500 employees, its fluctuating horde of performers, directors and writers provide NBC's share of the U.S. televiewing audience with up to 140 hours of programing weekly. Theoretically, all this goes on in the "public interest, convenience or necessity" under three-year FCC licenses (granted to individual stations, not to the network as a whole).
But the tables of organization do not show, the rented cable cannot encompass, the reality of television, which is an ever-fluctuating relationship between three powers: network officialdom, sponsors and their advertising agencies, and the program packagers.
The Package Business. During the early 1950s, NBC produced 90% of its own shows. But as broadcasting hours stretched out from predawn to long past midnight, the networks gradually turned to outside packagers to fill up the schedule. Partly this was due to pressure from the Justice Department, which in 1956 threatened antitrust action unless the networks gave independent producers a better share of good TV time. More significantly, in cutting back network-originated production 20% between 1956 and 1959, NBC was able to slice its "creative" payroll, slash overhead.
Now the network produces 40% of the shows that light up its channels, compared to 30% for CBS, 5% for ABC. Chief network-produced items: news and sports shows; a scattering of hard-to-sell prestige features (NBC Opera, Project 20); a hard core of moneymakers (The Jack Paar Show, You Bet Your Life); and two quizzes (Dough Re Mi and Concentration), originally developed by Barry & Enright, from whom Kintner bought eight other shows last year for $2,200,000.
Madison Avenue's top-drawer advertising agencies have followed the trend; five years ago, agencies spawned 10% of all network shows, now also save on overhead by shopping for their clients among the packagers. The ubiquitous package firms range in size from giants, e.g., Revue Productions Inc., dog-wagging tail of the Music Corp. of America, which grossed $38 million on its filmed series (M Squad, Wagon Train) last year, down to one-shot independents, e.g., Jack (Lassie) Wrather. The range is qualitative as well: Independent Robert Saudek has won Emmys and Peabody Awards for Omnibus, while Warner Bros, ground out ephemeral, low-budget shoot-'em-ups.