Electronic Stumping

RADIO & TELEVISION

Electronic Stumping The two major political parties this week will kick off the biggest, costliest, best-organized TV political campaign in history. Long before the conventions decided on the candidates, Republicans and Democrats retained three ad agencies and took options on some $4,500,000 worth of fall radio-TV time (three times the 1948 costs). There will be far less whistle-stopping and fewer talks with local bosses, now that TV is out of the bush league of politicking. Items:

P: Democrats are forking out about ten times as much money on radio-TV as on all other media combined. They have budgeted $1,600,000 for TV time, about $500,000 for radio--total $2,100,000. Republicans will spend some $2,200,000 for air time, 80% of it on TV. P: Democrats have scheduled eight half-hour shows and some 90 five-minute spots, most of which will be sandwiched between regular shows on the cheaper daytime slots. By intensive barnstorming, Democrats also hope to pick up plenty of free newscast coverage. The G.O.P. will run 15 half-hour shows, 35 five-minute shorts (all at night), has bought a solid hour on all three networks on election eve for a final go-out-and-vote speech by Ike.

P: Democrats will attempt a fairly sustained radio-TV pitch throughout this month and next. Republicans will start slowly, intensifying their campaign coverage in the three final pre-election weeks. This week the Democrats will experiment with saturation broadcasting: they will put Adlai Stevenson's Harrisburg, Pa. oration over all three networks and some 1,800 "blind" area stations. The G.O.P., understandably, is picking its stations, buying little time in the South (one exception: North Carolina, which has 175,000 Negro voters who might swing to Eisenhower).

P: Stevenson last week completed seven canned five-minute TV spots for a series called The Man from Libertyville, which for three days turned his farm into a studio. When a 20-man film team arrived with a 3,000-lb. dolly, he complained: "That crew is much too large. How do you expect me to act folksy in front of so many people?" (Next day the crew was halved.) Before the cameras without benefit of script, Stevenson pored over mail in his study, chatted with his pretty, pregnant daughter-in-law Nancy and a somber Adlai Jr. ("We don't want our boys going to Korea as you did," says Dad), picnicked on the lawn with ex-Mayor of Philadelphia Joseph Clark, trundled a huge bag of groceries (packed mostly with wadded paper) from his car to the front porch, where he sat down, delivered a homespun talk on the high cost of living, ending with Nancy arriving to reclaim the forgotten groceries ("You were a big help, Guv!"), bantered farm problems over the back fence with Estes Kefauver, cavorted about a well-clipped lawn with his dog Muldoon (who chewed the lapel off a soundman's jacket). Said Film-Maker Herschell Lewis: "The attempt is to make the viewer realize that Stevenson is actually like the guy next door."

P: G.O.P. campaigners have mapped out flexible TV strategy for the top candidates. Committeemen say Ike's short studio address next week will be the first of only "five or six" televised speeches. But, as Ike himself pointed out last week, there are "a number of invitations you have to consider," and so far his TV plans have not firmed up. Early next month Nixon will make his first national telecast, reporting on his upcoming swing through 32 states.

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