The Promised Land

In public speeches, TV executives love to dwell on a golden future when audiences will eagerly absorb great cultural programs, and sponsors will rush to pay for them. To prove that they are at least surveying the road to this promised land, the networks every now and then hire a well-known litterateur to act as intellectual trailblazer. Three years ago, NBC joyfully announced the hiring of Pulitzer Prizewinning Dramatist Robert Sherwood. Nothing much came of it. Last week CBS hired another Pulitzer Prizewinner, Dramatist Sidney (Men in White, Detective Story) Kingsley, to be its resident cultural genius.

Freedom to Explore. Kingsley, 49, has all the necessary qualifications -- enthusiasm, bubbling confidence, and a disarming naivete. "I don't quite know why CBS hired me," he says frankly. "It's a strange contract and gives me freedom to explore the whole field of television. I'm going to urge CBS to encourage the finest minds, the finest talents, to work for this medium." As for the medium itself: "There's been nothing like it since Gutenberg's invention of typesetting. I think it's going to set the intellectual and spiritual climate in this country for the next 20 years--the next 1,000 years."

Specifically, Kingsley has promised CBS five Spectaculars in the next five years, but he will also do serious "thinking" about TV problems and will suggest ideas for special projects: "I intend to develop the magical quality of TV, the things it can do technically that it hasn't begun to touch. Man's earliest dreams were allied to the idea of seeing on the walls of his cave a vision of something as it happens. And where realism is called for, I'm going to try and get good realism. I want more truthfulness in the execution of scenes and more truthfulness in the way people behave."

From CBS's point of view, Kingsley's attitude toward current television is not revolutionary. He likes to watch fights, Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan--which, happily, are all on CBS. He is impressed by the dramatic shows, and feels that quiz programs are only doing "what has been done since time immemorial: rewarding people for their knowledge." Because of TV's enormous potential for both good and evil, Kingsley thinks that it would be almost criminal for any major artist to ignore it: "The influence of TV can shape an election; thus it can shape the fate of the nation. We mustn't be snobbish about television."

First Love. Kingsley, who won his Pulitzer Award with his first play (Men in White) only five years after graduating from Cornell, will not let his newfound passion for TV keep him away from Broadway: "The theater is the Tiffany of the industry and will always be my first love. In fact, I won't do any serious thinking about TV until I've finished the play I'm working on now--a contemporary tragedy. I imagine my first TV offering will be a rewrite of one of my old plays, perhaps Dead End."

In guiding TV toward its promised Golden Age, Kingsley may accomplish wonders. But so far, the industry has lumbered like a Juggernaut over imported outsiders who have sought to give it purpose and direction. Billy Rose, another veteran showman, who served for 18 months as a highly paid NBC consultant, last week sounded a warning for Kingsley: "It was a very pleasant time and very lucrative. I was consulted now and then and wrote a few reports. But what actually happened is what generally happens when a person merely talks. Nothing. I can't think of any more idiotic occupation than that of a TV consultant."

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