Quality Begins at Home

One big criticism of radio and television has always been that the networks not only sell commercial spots to their sponsors but often let the advertisers control the programs as well. This week NBC made a major move to reverse the trend. It signed an unprecedented contract with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Dramatist & Biographer Robert Sherwood (Idiot's Delight, Roosevelt and Hopkins], guaranteeing him more than $100,000 for a series of nine original hour-long TV plays to be written during the next three years. An even more important and unusual stipulation: Sherwood may write about any subject he chooses (except religious controversy), and is specifically protected against any interference from advertising agencies or sponsors.

The contract grew out of a lunch with RCA President Frank Folsom at which Sherwood complained that radio & TV were the only mediums in which writers have no contact with the heads of the industry. Folsom announced that NBC was happy "to grant the artistic freedom which all fine authors require to create great works of art." Says Sherwood, with satisfaction: "Under the contract, the question of quality is left entirely to me. They can't say that the boy has to get the girl." His only worry: "If I write nine stinkers, it's going to be pretty awful."

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