Summer Slump

Although viewers long ago learned what to expect of warm-weather TV, network bigwigs can usually be expected to lay out, brightly glazed promises of summer fun. But this year even the networks have stopped making believe. "It's simply a matter of economics," explains CBS Programmer Hubbell Robinson Jr. "The winter shows cost so much we have to cut down in summer and save money." Some old favorites will stay on, encouraged perhaps by the upswing in sales of portable TV models to vacationing patio and beach viewers. But mostly this summer's TV will be a rehash of the late season's mediocrity, with a few raw replacements thrown in. Network by network:

ABC. Chief newcomer is a live vaudeville show on Saturdays called Popsicle Five Star Comedy Party, on which Ventriloquist Paul Winchell and Dummy Jerry Mahoney rotate with Oldtimers Ben Blue, Jerry Colonna, Olsen & Johnson. Fearless Wyatt Earp, Cheyenne and The Lone Ranger will continue to defend the frontiers, but only with reruns of last season's shows, and a "new drama series" disguised as Key Club Playhouse will run off old films from Ford Theater. Folksy Bandleader Lawrence Welk, whose climb to the No. 5 position in the ratings began with a summer replacement spot two years ago, will obligingly tootle all summer long. Grand Inquisitor Mike Wallace, the chain's "biggest" new talent, will be around on Sunday nights. Already filling in for vacationing Kukla, Fran & Ollie is Sports Focus, a new show featuring sports news and interviews with top athletes. There will also be reruns of many ABC standbys.

CBS. Once experiment-minded in summer, CBS contemplates only one new show: a live comedy-variety spot for young (29) Dick Van Dyke, an Orson Beanish kind of comic who earlier served on To Tell the Truth. Humorist Sam Levenson's quiz game Two for the Money will share Saturday's Jackie Gleason hour with filmed editions of old Jimmy Durante shows. The newest hillbilly darling, Jimmy Dean, will continue his weekday morning show and also move into CBS's "new talent spot" on Saturday night at 10:30--a bonus for having clobbered NBC's Today in the ratings. TV's best drama factory, Playhouse 90, will replay only the shows it originally did on film, all of them poor. The one CBS experiment will be Monday night's Studio One Summer Theater, a sort of summer-stock version of the regular Studio One, returning live shows with new acting and directing talent. Low-key Comic Peter Lind Hayes will pinch-hit for Godfrey on Talent Scouts, and last summer's hot-pop Baritone Vic ("Da Moan") Damone returns with his caramel-whip tunes for a live hour in Godfrey's Wednesday-night spot. Fred Waring replaces Garry Moore's morning show; more Ford Theater reruns will fill in for Red Skelton, and Those Whiting Girls (Singers Margaret and Barbara) replace I Love Lucy. CBS's promising public affairs show, Look Up and Live, last Sunday began a special nine-part summer series aimed at helping teenagers. And daytime's You Are the Jury is an unrehearsed courtroom drama exploring areas often considered tabu on TV. Experienced judges and counsel will play themselves, and a jury will be selected from the studio audience. A few sturdy reliables will fight the summer heat live: Ed Sullivan, U.S. Steel Hour, What's My Line?, $64,000 Question and Challenge, I've Got a Secret, Climax!

NBC. Song makes the best hot-weather din-and-tonic, thinks NBC. The 7:30 evening slot will be tryout time for promising Vocalist June (Crying in the Chapel) Valli. Baritone Andy Williams and resurgent, as-good-as-ever Helen O'Connell. Tennessee Ernie Ford will end his daytime pea-pickin' at June's end and be replaced by Bride and Groom, the old daytime stand-by that marries couples on the air and presents them with gifts, a reception and honeymoon. Arthur Murray Party, a perennial replacement, has already bounced cheerily on screen in full color, and will move into half of Robert Montgomery's Monday place next month. Although such giveaways as Tic Tac Dough and The Price Is Right trudge on in the daytime, NBC will cancel Home, its 3 1/2-year-old, hour-long "service" show, in August. NBC is also mercifully scrapping the Tonight format and reverting to the freewheeling foolishness of the old Ernie Kovacs-Steve Allen days, with slouchy, sentimental Jack Paar picking up the pieces left by this season's witless nightclub gossipists. For the first time in its ten years. Kraft TV Theater will maintain its $50,000 winter budget despite polls that indicate a viewer decline in summer. Tentatively set for Thursday as NBC's biggest summer show is a new "low highbrow'' quiz called High Low with Charles Van Doren as a panelist. Continuing live in their oldtime slots: Twenty One, Steve Allen, Alcoa-Good-year, Lux Video Theater. Good Music-Making Perry Como gets a relaxed substitute in 27-year-old Julius La Rosa, who will pull a 13-week tour in color. Says NBC's Program Director Manie Sacks: "When you are perspiring, it's a lot easier to watch the music stuff."

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