Year of the Horse

Once upon a time. TV worried about the shortage of good writers. Now producers worry about the shortage of good horses: they are shooting so many westerns that Hollywood stables can hardly keep up with their bookings ($10 a day for an "extra" horse, $25 minimum for a beast with a role). This shift in concern was as telling a portent as any last week when television rounded the bend of its 1957-58 season. It is a season in which network advertisers are spending more than ever--about $660 million a year--to woo the largest audience yet--42 million TV homes--on the theory that, as one CBS bigwig frankly put it. "the best kind of entertainment is what the people want to watch."

High-Riding & Downbeat. To the surprise of the critics and even the network brass, the people mainly want to watch westerns. And so horse operas fill half of Nielsen's latest list of the nation's ten top-rated shows. No. 1: CBS's Gunsmoke, starring big (6 ft. 6 in., 220 Ibs.) James Arness. Every one of the 21 westerns that opened the season is still going strong, another will probably be trotted out this winter, and at least three others are champing to cut loose next fall.

Curiously, the season's other major trend--the show built around a star vocalist--is boomeranging. NBC's Perry Como and Dinah Shore, whose early success inspired the idea, enjoy the personal touch and the production support that still set them apart. Though her ratings have been ungallant, ABC's Patrice Munsel has given TV a welcome fillip of talented sex and voice appeal. But the Pat Boones, Giselle MacKenzies and Patti Pages have drawn neither rating nor rooting, and Guy Mitchell will get the ax at ABC this month. Biggest disappointment: Frank Sinatra, now busily trying to puff some life into his costly ABC-Chesterfield series.

Both the high-riding westerns and the downbeat singers reflect a certain hardening of TV's arteries. The formats have jelled; the entertainment too often looks as mass-produced as the receivers. Production has shifted steadily to Hollywood, where the film factories grind out series after series like links of sausage. Despite its uneven quality this season, Playhouse go proves that Hollywood TV can turn out good live drama as well. But with the move of CBS's Studio One to Hollywood this month, live TV drama has lost almost the last of the roots that nourished it from fertile Broadway soil.

Wrinkles & Old Age. In new faces, fresh ideas or creative talent, the season has little to show so far. The only major new star is a personable retread named Jack Paar (TIME, Oct. 28), the gentlemanly comic who rescued NBC's Tonight from the junk heap. Studio One produced The Deaf Heart (TIME. Nov. 4), a striking first script by a highly promising 29-year-old playwright named Mayo Simon, but nobody seems to know whether he can ride or shoot. Of the new situation comedies, only Leave It to Beaver (see below) has taken fire. Among minor new wrinkles: ABC's All-Star Golf (TIME, Dec. 23), a tournament played just for viewers; a vogue for old horror movies; the bold, brash (though often anticlimactic) interviews of Mike Wallace.

Meanwhile, attrition is gnawing at old formulas and favorites. This may be remembered as the season when Arthur Godfrey became a mortal. Both of his TV shows are being drubbed by the competition, which is even taking large bites out of the old champion's radio audience. Godfrey's sponsors are still strongly loyal to their star salesman, but his rating losses on the network schedule pose a problem for CBS, which this season has lost some of its audience edge over an aggressive NBC and a fast-growing ABC. Another blow to CBS has been the slippage of The $64,000 Question, which, despite such frantic publicity stunts as an appearance by Jack Benny, dropped out of the Nielsen top ten for the first time in 2 1/2 years. Strike It Rich is dropping right out of the CBS schedule next week. But given such variations as The Price Is Right or Twenty-One, the quiz show still seems good for many seasons to come.

Specter & Cheer. One major bright spot of the season is the "special," as TV now calls its "spectacular." The genre produced one sheer disaster--Mike Todd's go-minute commercial for Mike Todd on CBS--but its batting average has been lifted high with such hits as The Prince and the Pauper, The Green Pastures, Annie Get Your Gun and the NBC Opera production of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. Most of these were in color, but there was still no big breakthrough in sales to U.S. homes of color sets, which now number only 250,000.

TV's "intellectual ghetto'' on Sunday has been crowded with rewarding shows, too frequently elbowing one another out of the viewer's sight. CBS's The Twentieth Century is a gilt-edged newcomer, and on NBC, Omnibus has dropped the apron strings of the Ford Foundation without a break in its stride. After a slow start, The Seven Lively Arts gave the season its liveliest artistic success and costliest flop ($1,250,000), in the absence of sponsors, and taught its uncomfortable host, TV Critic John Crosby, that where criticism is concerned, it is more blessed to give than to receive (TIME, Nov. 18). CBS's decision to present sponsored major-league baseball on Sunday afternoons starting next June raised an ugly specter: Will fiercer competition among the networks upset the tradition of giving one afternoon a week to culture?

In its tenth year--the year of the horse --TV has shaken down into a schedule so dense with dross that tuning in at almost any hour is enough to make the dial flip. Perhaps the wonder--and certainly cause for cheer--is that the viewer who steers a knowing course through the immense, unending flow of eyewash can still find so much to charm the eye.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.