The Free Air

"That's what this network needs--a little guts." Thus speaks a character in The Commentator, a TV script about a newscaster who runs afoul of his employers by editorializing. The network is a fictitious company called Amalgamated Broadcasting, but there are only three TV networks in the U.S., and perhaps it was unrealistic to expect any of them to broadcast such lines or dramatize such a situation. Last week CBS, which had canceled a broadcast by its own Analyst Eric Sevareid for editorializing (TIME, Feb. 25), canceled the scheduled performance of The Commentator on next week's Studio One.

"It was just not good enough," insisted a CBS executive. "We never discussed the script from the point of view of its subject matter. Our decision was based simply on our feeling that it wasn't a successful script. We just couldn't lick some of the creative problems." Retorted the author, John Secondari, head of ABC's Washington news bureau and himself a commentator: "I absolutely believe that it is a matter of CBS policy, not a question of dramatic merit."

Secondari, an experienced novelist (Coins in the Fountain), wrote no Emmy winner in The Commentator, but the script is better than many and unique in coming to grips with a problem of backstage TV at the topmost level. Secondari's commentator creates a crisis by blasting a demagogic Congressman. The network backs him up (as CBS backed up Edward R. Murrow in his celebrated 1954 editorial against Joe McCarthy). But in the end--after speeches deriding the network board of directors as "careful coupon clippers'' and the advertising agencies as "prudent dispensers of panaceas and happy endings"--the commentator gets fired. The viewer is left to judge between the newscaster's demand for free expression and the network president's case against giving so much power to one man. In effect, the script gives the reader fresh reason to wonder whether a medium of communication dedicated first to selling things, and also subject to government controls, can be expected ever to achieve full power to discuss and to inform.

Secondari, who works as a newsman for a network that encourages commentators to editorialize, wrote his play for NBC's Alcoa Hour about a year ago. Producer Herbert Brodkin bought it, but NBC refused to put it on the air. NBC's candid explanation, as given last week by a spokesman: "In making it appear that sponsors or advertising agencies have any influence on network news shows, the script was simply untrue." The rights to the play then reverted to Secondari. When Producer Brodkin moved over to CBS's Studio One, he bought The Commentator again, paying the "top price," according to the author. Producer Brodkin then cited the script in a newspaper interview to "debunk" the notion that TV is hamstrung by taboos. Last week, after getting word of the cancellation, Brodkin said, "I resent the implication that I am being censored." And Author Secondari, noting that ABC has no live dramatic show, concluded: "I've run out of networks."

One day last week Dr. David M. Spain had a telephone call inviting him to appear on NBC's Close-Up for an interview about the report that he and six other physicians issued fortnight ago fixing heavy cigarette smoking as a major cause of lung cancer.* Dr. Spain, a Columbia University pathologist and director of laboratories at Brooklyn's Beth-El Hospital, accepted with permission of the American Cancer Society. But soon afterward, the show withdrew its invitation, explaining that arrangements had hit "a snag." Said a production assistant: "I was advised that this would be a hot situation to handle." Said NBC: "The network did not cancel the interview." Close-Up's Boss Tex McCrary had an explanation: "We have a policy of presenting both sides of a question on the same program. I made several attempts to locate a doctor who would oppose Dr. Spain's view, but I could not find one who was available [on short notice]."

* All the networks broadcast the findings, even on news shows sponsored by cigarette manufacturers.

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