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would come when they would say to the network, We'll give you the strongest program on the air, but we're not going to pay you anything to carry it. The benefit to you is that you get the circulation and you can build programs around it. And that almost happened.

So, we were anxious to see this checkerboarding take place. And I think the advertisers --

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Okay. So, was the checkerboarding at your initiative, and when did that start?

I think it was a selling tactic that developed -- I wouldn't say that it was our initiative or that it was the advertisers. These things were sort of blended in history because they came out of discussions. Procter and Gamble and J. Walter Thompson certainly adopted the plan. But whether our people in trying to sell it suggested it, or whether they came up with it -- It grew out of the spot business because advertisers were buying station breaks and things of that kind. So this wasn't something that we did or they did. It was a thing that developed jointly.

One good example of that was in the case of Jackie Gleason. When we bought Jackie Gleason as a talent, and agreed to underwrite his program, Gleason drove a very -- or his agent -- drove a very hard bargain. He wanted X dollars for his show for so many weeks. He would not agree that if we weren't successful in selling it that we could pay him off but not put him on the air. It was a play and pay deal. Frequently the deals were either pay or play and if you weren't successful you could settle for a sizeable amount of money. Gleason wanted -- we