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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

Q:

In other words, they saw that your programs were more highly rated than NBC? Is that what you're trying--

Stanton:

No. It wasn't even that sophisticated. When they saw the ratings on “Lucy” --

Q:

Yes.

Stanton:

-- and they saw the ratings on somebody else's station, they snapped to and said we'll clear. The word “clear” doesn't mean anything much today, but it meant a lot in those days. “Clearance” simply meant that if there was one station in the market, and both NBC and CBS offered a program, the one who cleared or accepted the program live, was a more important station to us than the one who said: We'll accept it on a delayed basis and put it late at night or some other time. There just weren't enough stations to go around. That's why I said earlier that it was a two and a half network economy -- Because there wasn't enough money really to support two full networks, or three networks. And Noble was in third place.

I've jumbled up a lot of things in this conversation here, but --

Q:

No. Not at all. It's very interesting. At this point, then, the advertisers still owned the shows, the programs, is that correct?

Stanton:

Oh, yes. Advertisers for the most part bought the programs and brought them to the network and that created other problems for us, dating back to the radio days. Because when Texaco had “The Fire Chief,” when Ed Wynn was on radio for Texaco, it was on NBC,





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