Writers' Day

A new age of prosperity for dramatists seems to be on its way in the U.S.--and TV is bringing it in. The key to the renaissance of American dramatic writing: producers of plays need playwrights --good, bad or mediocre--even more than playwrights need play producers. The reason for this unprecedented situation lies in the difference between the traditional theater, which may remain closed or run one play for months, and TV, the electronic monster that gobbles up material 18 hours a day every day of the year.

Of the cataract of TV entertainment that floods the U.S., an increased proportion next year will stream from TV drama. At peak season, viewers will get, live and on film, up to 140 hours of drama a week. At peak hours, drama audiences will average an estimated 23 million viewers per play, and much more than that for touted scripts. By year's end, well over 1,000 live teledramas will have been shown. How staggering these facts are becomes plain on comparison with those of the Broadway theater: there are rarely more than 60 plays a season, most of them duds, and the total long-run audience of a smash hit seldom rises to 4% of the audience of an average TV drama.

A Need for Hacks. As the realization grows in TV circles that an inferior script means an inferior show, despite stars and lavish production, the prices for quality plays are gradually spiraling upward. Next season quality writers will get as much as $2,000 for a half-hour script (22 minutes minus commercials and credits) and up to $6,000 for a one-hour script (44 minutes). Some writers are already making $30,000 and $40,000 a year on their TV work alone. When Hollywood snaps up a TV script, the writer's income soars.

But the need for writers of quality is matched by an even greater need for writers without it (to feed the insatiable electronic monster). At the summit of the giant networks, the executives sound very much alike. Says CBS's President Frank Stanton: "This is the time for writers. I think they're going to inherit the earth." Then he adds: "Mass circulation is the important thing, and you pay a price for it. But formula shows often have a professional quality that so-called quality shows wish they had." NBC's President Sylvester L. ("Pat") Weaver Jr. readily recognizes the reality of quality shows, but is just as quick to embrace the routine for commercial purposes.

"Writers are basic," says Weaver. "But hacks are as necessary as geniuses."

One new NBC drama project, Matinee, demonstrates why Weaver is anxious to develop and popularize the ancient art of hack writing. Matinee next season begins a series of five one-hour plays a week (Monday through Friday, 3 p.m., E.D.T.) every week of the year. The 260 plays yearly require, according to NBC, an initial $1,000,000 outlay, 4,000 actors, 20 directors, five permanent production units and 100 writers and adapters. This one show is the theatrical equivalent of five fully staffed repertory companies, with salaries and audiences guaranteed.

World's Greatest Audience. To satisfy network needs, and develop competent hacks and sparkling geniuses, both NBC and CBS have plans to dragnet the nation for new writing talent. NBC's plan, more ambitious, aims at attracting established fiction writers to TV and developing new ones. Five well-known U.S. novelists, including James (From Here to Eternity) Jones, are already interested. NBC also plans to put a dozen dramatists on staff at regular salaries, hoping to prove that security can quicken the dramatic muse even more than hunger.

Most present TV drama is pretty bad. But some of it, coping with the unique nature of the medium, is surprisingly good. TV's outstanding writer, Paddy (Marty) Chayefsky, perhaps tooting his own horn a bit, has been led to the questionable judgment that "the best dramatic writing done in our country is being done on television." What cannot be questioned is that TV dramatists have an unparalleled opportunity. For fancy pay they are shaping a new art form, one that lacks the range of the movies and the immediacy of the theater, but has more intimacy than either.

Writers Chayefsky, Reginald Rose, Rod Serling and half a dozen others are facing the new challenge, but because of TV's commercial limitations and the fact that it rests on a billion dollar advertising industry, no writer can have an easy time. A writer is dictated to, in a degree, by advertising agencies and sponsors about what he may write. Example: on a drama show sponsored by a milk firm, the customer may not always be right, but she is always good. Mothers buy milk and, therefore, on these shows there are no bad or even neurotic mothers.

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