"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.