New Voice on Channel 13

On the 20th floor of Manhattan's slick Coliseum Tower one bleak, humid afternoon last week, a flock of paunchy, proud fathers-to-be tried to conceal their expectancy behind a normal day's office routine. Sympathetic friends sat heavily in blue-flowered armchairs or toured a chrome-polished kitchen, which, their uneasy host boasted, was "bigger than General Sarnoff's." Then at 3 p.m. the baby was born. The baby: New York area's newest stations--WNTA A.M. and P.M., and WNTA-TV (Channel 13).

Network on Film. NTA claims to be "the nation's fourth television network." In industry terms, the claim is more hope than reality since there is no electronic linkage between NTA's affiliated stations. But President Ely Landau, a blunt, rounded dynamo of 38, has made a career of turning his ambitions into achievements. In 1951, on a mere $500, he incorporated himself as a TV film packager and distributor; in 1953 he expanded the corporation and renamed it National Telefilms Associates, began buying and distributing Hollywood films for TV release. Soon he had talked 134 TV stations into providing him with prime time for NTA films, got many of them to agree to simultaneous showing--the basis for Landau's claim to "network" status. Impressed by this record of success, 20th Century-Fox came into the film network as a fifty-fifty backer.

Last year NTA bought its first station, Minneapolis' KMGM-TV (now KMSP-TV), last week bought Newark's faltering WATV and its radio affiliates for $4,500,-ooo and renamed it WNTA. Now NTA is angling for a full FCC-allowed quota of five TV stations. On the stock market last week, NTA shares sold at close to $10--three times their price two years ago. Its assets have passed the $40 million mark.

First Wallop. To this amazing rise, many video junglemen react with unease (sample: "They're film people; they'll kill live TV"), but behind the criticisms there is also wholesome respect. WNTA programs are plotted by brash Ted Cott, 41, a moonfaced, high-pressure promoter and former vice president of (in order) WNEW, NBC, and Dumont.

Cott's WNTA-TV began with a wallop. It offered quality films (The Snake Pit, Laura) three nights a week, showed them on a movie theater's continuous-program basis from 7:30 to 12:30, which let the viewer pick his time and go to bed early. In the afternoons Cott scheduled natural-science documentaries, highbrow interviews with such distinguished men as Poet Robert Frost and Dr. Jonas Salk, rebroadcasts of historic news telecasts, e.g., the famed Army-McCarthy hearings. And for its live ventures, WNTA introduced a weekly Art Ford's Jazz Party in which such top-ranked musicians as Trombonist Wilbur de Paris and Clarinetist Pee Wee Russell got together in an empty studio for a genuinely informal jam session that made the big networks' jazz spectaculars seem pretentious and overorganized.

By the end of its first day, WNTA had reaped a 10.6 A.R.B. rating, captured 17% of the TV audience, increased its number of viewers (over WATV) 4,200%. Wrote the New York Times's Jack Gould: "WNTA-TV has shaken up tired old New York television."

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