The Many-Splendored Thing

Of the many social scientists concerned with television's lingering pubescence, none has been more dogged than Connecticut's prim Senator Thomas Dodd, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Three times in the past year, Senator Dodd has called television's mahatmas to Washington, and three times they have skittered away and gone safely back to New York, leaving the Senator pondering his persistent question: Why does television pander so to sex and violence? Last week Senator Dodd wanted to know what CBS-TV President James Aubrey had in mind in an interoffce memo asking for more "broads, bosoms and fun" in the vapid Route 66 series. Aubrey was cool. Outsiders did not understand what the industry meant by sex. "I've heard it used in every connotation from mother-and-child scenes to the way an actress walks." With that in mind, Aubrey said, it would be "quite easy" for people in the business to read "broad" as "wholesome, pretty girl," and "bosoms" as "attractive." NBC's Robert Kintner added that when Senate gumshoes come across the word "sex" in his network's file, they should understand it to mean "romantic interest, boy-meets-girl, attractive girls, love stories--nothing immoral that would be out of place on the home screen." Onward. But Dodd was unsatisfied with learning that sex is a many-splendored thing. "We have heard such terms as the 'Kintner edict,' the 'Aubrey dictum' and what could be termed the 'Treyz [for Oliver, recently jettisoned ABC president] trend,' a trend, I might add, away from the high moral standards of practice set by each network," he said darkly. "A look at the history of those three gentlemen may give a clue to the development of their program philosophies. All were high officials of ABC in the embryonic development of ABC's concept of how to entice the viewing audience, a concept which emphasized crime, violence and sex." But the network presidents insisted that about the only thing wrong in the industry is its sloppy memos. When Dodd questioned CBS President Frank Stanton about his response to complaints about a Route 66 show in which a juvenile gang leader is chain-whipped, Stanton said: "It is not my responsibility to get each secretary's notes about a telephoned complaint but to watch out for program quality of the network generally." Snapped Dodd: "I had hoped to hear an expression of real determination to eliminate such things from your programs. But if you're going to take the attitude that your head is in the clouds, there isn't any hope for us.

In my judgment, the situation is getting worse instead of better." Outward. Dodd, who has heard his fill of TV talk, could not suppress a gnawing complaint: "You all seem to use the same terminology--to think alike--and to jam this stuff down people's throats." Men of good will who object to all this sex and violence, he added, are promptly sacked by all three networks. This time, it was ABC-TV's boss Thomas W. Moore who spoke the industry's bland philosophy. "They come and they go," he said, "through revolving doors."

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