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didn't have as much to offer the talent as NBC did. And Lucy in the example I was just citing -- Lucy was not under contract to us. She was under contract to her own producing company which sold the program to Phillip Morris. Phillip Morris in turn could take it wherever he wanted to go. There were only two places for it to go. But Milton Biow was a shrewd agency executive who wanted to get the best possible circulation for his advertiser, so he said, “I'll give you the show if you can give me the best line-up.”

How long did the advertisers continue to own the shows?

Well, they stayed with it for quite a time. I think they'd still be doing it if they could afford it, but the risk is so great. Another thing that happened, almost simultaneously -- well, not simultaneously -- Another development was that the advertiser had to take a considerable risk to say, I'll put all of my chips in one basket. Radio was not that expensive, television was expensive. So some advertisers said, Well, if the network will buy the show, we'll buy a little bit of this one and we'll buy a little bit of that one. And what developed was a thing called checkerboarding of commercials, so that Procter and Gamble had parts of ten shows instead of ownership of three. If the three had all been tremendous successes, maybe they'd have been better off. But they were playing their bets across the board. And simultaneously, I think that -- I didn't want to see an advertiser get a lock on a program that he could take someplace else, because if they owned the program they could move it wherever they could get the best deal.

Oh, I see.

And if they had a very strong program they might even -- I was afraid the day