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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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comments about Gracie and so forth. And Jack Benny came over, and Red Skelton came over to television. All of these big stars moved laterally at the same time, in many cases, that they were continuing on radio.

So, we had a strong schedule. We had no trouble getting affiliates if there were stations in the community. There were many markets where there was only one station, which was the NBC affiliate. And they would carry part of our schedule and part of NBC's schedule -- to our detriment, because we couldn't deliver certain parts of the schedule to the advertiser.

When Milton [H.] Biow -- B.I.O.W. -- of the Biow Agency, which handled Phillip Morris -- when Milton called me one day and said, “I've got a program that I'd like to put on your television network. I'll give you a crack at it. But I'll tell you right now, I'm going to give it to the network which can clear the most stations. I hot-footed it over, I think to this very building, and saw Milton, who ran pretty much a one-man show in terms of the agency business -- very successful operator -- and I saw Milton and he said, “I have the exclusive on a situation comedy that I think you would like to have because you used to carry him on radio.” And I said, “Who is it?” And he said, “Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

“And I want eight-thirty,” I think he said, “on Monday night. If you can deliver a network at that time with sufficient stations, I'll give you the program.”

It was owned by the advertiser --

Q:

Right.





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