Network Without Ulcers

"The Blue Network," mused dapper, cinnamon-blond Mark Woods, tweaking his buttonhole carnation, "was a dump."

He was speaking literally. Before the Blue left home (NBC) in 1942, it had nothing to wear but castoffs--speeches, discussions, classical music--from its flashy big sister, NBC's Red Network. When NBC got rid of the Blue (by request of the Federal Communications Commission), Woods became its first president. His first job: to auction off "the dullest, speechingest network you ever heard," a 116-station property that brought in a slim $14 million in 1942. It took Mark a year and a half to find a buyer.

But in five years the Blue has moved deep into the black, become a shipshape, 250-station property, now known as the American Broadcasting Company. Last year it had a gross income of more than $40 million.

ABC rolled up that score with some of the niftiest, take-a-chance razzle-dazzle ever seen in the radio game. When other networks feared to transcribe big nighttime shows, ABC risked it; last week ABC's transcribed Bing Crosby show got one of the top Hooperatings: 25.8. Last fall a quick-thinking young ABC executive jumped to the phone the moment he finished reading John Hersey's Hiroshima in the New Yorker, got exclusive broadcast privileges for ABC from the magazine. This week Hiroshima won ABC a Peabody Award (see below).

The Sunny Smile. There are plenty of bright young wheels in the ABC machine. The biggest, Executive V.P. Bob Kintner (who was once half of the Alsop & Kintner column-writing team), is only 37. But the most important item in the plant is "The Oilcan"--easygoing, 47-year-old Mark Woods.* Mark is one of the best-liked men in radio, and one of the shrewdest. A near-genius at negotiation, he is often asked to handle the industry's top-level labor relations. Lapped in Mark's sunny smile, even the wintry Petrillo has been known to thaw like any spring sap.

Mark grew up in Jacksonville, Fla. At 18, he went north, went to work as an accountant for "a boyhood idol," Thomas Edison. At 19, he got a better job with American Telephone & Telegraph, which then owned Manhattan's WEAF.

From that day, Mark's are the short & simple annals of success. When A.T. & T. got out of radio, Mark went with young NBC, quickly became a vice president. "I never could understand," he says, "why they didn't make me president." When the Blue struck out for itself, Mark made the grade. "Now," he grins, "I sit back and let the boys run the show."

One of the boys last week paid his boss a brief but enormous tribute: "Nobody at ABC has an ulcer."

* Except for candy manufacturer Edward J. Noble, who now owns 75% of ABC's stock. Time Inc. bought a 12 1/2% piece of ABC in 1943, sold it back to Noble in 1945.

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