Mr. Television

NBC now televises an average of 28 hours a week, and about 23 of them have the same announcer. Robert S. (for nothing) Stanton's busy schedule includes all Giant baseball games at the Polo Grounds, two evenings a week of prize fights, a studio show (U.S. Rubber's corny Campus Hoopla) and nearly all of NBC's "remotes" (out-of-studio telecasts), such as the U.N. Palestine hearings.

Sports are Bob Stanton's specialty, and sports thus far are television's biggest attraction. Once, back in 1932, he had a brief fling at singing in a band (his onetime lyric tenor has now become a well-modulated announcer's baritone), but singing was "too much of a grind." After he began sports announcing, he spent eight years playing second fiddle to Sportcaster Bill Stern, doing the crowd description fill-ins at big games and announcing the second-string events. In 1940 he had a chance to telecast the New York World's Fair Soap Box Derby. In & out of television ever since, he deserted radio for good last November and bet on video as a full-time career.

There was no book of rules for television announcers, and Stanton learned the tricks by trial & error. Before many weeks, he was supplying rules and statistics for bewildered sports fans, ignoring the obvious, calling an occasional play wrong to delight armchair experts, devising a set of silent signals and on-the-air cues for his cameramen and spotters, keeping his commentary at a slow pace so that the cameras could follow without jerky images. His friends helped out by bar-hopping and giving him reports of audience reaction to his sportcasting. For a while, he had an uneasy sensation that he was becoming a victim of technocracy--"merely a stooge for mechanical contraptions." But he solved that problem by insinuating himself into the telecast. Because he has to remain an offstage voice and seldom appears on the screen, he devised such tricks as calling for a cup of coffee on a bitter day and munching peanuts audibly at a ball game.

Around NBC these days, Stanton is regarded with considerable awe as a man of superior technical know-how. Even Bill Stern "is always hanging around now, to find out how it's done."

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