Getting the Message

Is Man from U.N.C.L.E. a TV hit be cause people like spy stories or because they are fascinated with David Mc-Callum's thatched hairdo? Did John F.

Kennedy outscore Richard Nixon in the Great Debates through the force of his arguments or because he projected a "blurry, shaggy texture?" Does foot ball draw better than baseball on TV because everything happens with simultaneous near-confusion on the gridiron as opposed to the slow sequential order of events on the diamond?

The suggestion behind these questions goes to the root of Marshall McLuhan's theory that "the medium is the message." McLuhan, the communications gadfly who wrote The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media, is the proponent of some slap-happy notions (The "jazz babies" of the 1920s caused the Depression by not caring about work). But his most fascinating idea is that television is a "cool, low-intensity" medium that projects a fuzzy image, compared with "hot" print and film. This means that the TV image demands the viewer's involvement by requiring him to complete the picture himself through his own imagination. Hence, there is no need for television to project an orderly or "linear" progression of a story; the viewer takes care of that himself. In other words, TV's first principle is that form counts more than content.

Murky Stories. Television men have been kicking these ideas around for a couple of years, but it is only recently that a network official decided to take McLuhan on. Writing in the current issue of Television Quarterly, CBS Public Information Vice President Charles Steinberg, a Ph.D. specializing in communications, called McLuhanism "an amalgam of camp and voodoo," "semantic nonsense," and an "alienation of humanism." And besides, he added, it flies in the face of "conventional wisdom."

Steinberg, who does not pretend to speak for CBS management, never defines precisely what he means by conventional wisdom. Still, the effect of his argument can be seen in the CBS program lineup. Like NBC and ABC, Steinberg's network devotes a lot of time to news, public affairs and respectable, "cultural" programs (Death of a Salesman, the Young People's Concerts series). But CBS's regular programming emphasizes situation comedy and old-wave adventure; the Lucy Show, Comer Pyle and Gunsmoke, all more or less tell "linear" stories. The NBC and ABC standard schedules could be called slightly more McLuhanesque--/ Spy, Man From U.N.C.L.E., Dating Game, N.Y.P.D.; their murky story lines are sub merged in frantic action or personal interaction.

These distinctions are only general, but they are also tantalizing enough to constitute a basis for debate within the networks. NBC Audience Measurement Vice President Paul Klein and MGM-TV's sales coordinator, Herman Keld, argue that McLuhan is essentially right. Keld, for example, predicted that Joey Bishop, a "hot" nightclub comic who comes on strong, was bound to start out at a disadvantage in audience ratings when he went on the late-night air for ABC against "cool" Johnny Carson. He was right; and when Bishop decided to switch to a low-key approach, his ratings improved.

Youngsters especially reflect the McLuhan notion that plot is less important than image. Says Klein: "Television-oriented people don't care about stories. There's no need to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. They care about people doing things, and all at once." What makes Spy successful, adds Klein, is not plot ("They are silly or nonexistent") but an interesting and warm relationship that is projected by the two lead spies, Bill Cosby and Bob Gulp. The Monkees' story line defies logic, but the show is a hit with the kids. U.N.C.L.E. swings chiefly through gimmickry aided by action--not to mention what Keld calls the "tactile, TV hair" of Illya Kuryakin. Some of NBC's custom-shot movies (World Premiere) de-emphasize plot; yet they get remarkable ratings.

Classic Soof. For further evidence that plot progression is not essential for TV, the McLuhanites cite the classic goof on CBS in 1965. The network was running a Hollywood movie, The Notorious Landlady. Inadvertently, a technician played two of the three reels out of sequence. Twenty-one million people watched the show, but the network got only a peep of protest.

While none of the networks is ready yet to line up 100% for or against hot or cold programming, TV decision-makers are nevertheless pondering McLuhan's implications. They have already seen that some of the most adventurous and entertaining productions on the screen are the TV commercials that get their messages across through imagery rather than hot, hard sell. Eastern Airlines' Miami campaign, for example, shows a smoke-filled nightclub scene in which dancers gradually emerge through the murk. It's pure McLuhan, and it sells tickets.

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