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had to get, as I recall, $50,000 a broadcast for the Gleason hour on Saturday night. We made the deal, I think, in June and when Labor Day came and the season was beginning to lock up, we had not sold Jackie Gleason to a single advertiser. Nobody wanted it. He was an unknown. Although he had been on the air, he was never really tested nationally. And in fact up and down Madison Avenue, there was not much interest in him. I was going crazy because if we had had to pay off Gleason at $50,000 a week, it would have wiped out every nickel of profit that the network had. That's how close we were to the margin.

A man by the name of Billy Hylan was the head of sales in the television network division. He knew that I was sweating it out and came up to me one morning with an idea. And if I'd approve it, he would try to make it work -- about Gleason. I was eager to hear. The idea was we would split Gleason up into three twenty minute segments every other week, so in effect we could sell six pieces of Gleason, and nobody had to risk a lot of money. So if you wanted to sort of dip your little toe into the water and find out whether it was good or bad, you could do it by spending a sixth of $50,000. He sold it out almost within a day -- saved my neck, saved - - The show was going to be on anyway, but it certainly would have been a disaster if we hadn't been able to sell it. And of course Gleason took off and that was it. But that came about as a result of the same kind of checkerboarding.

Right.

And that goes on even today.

So during the war and after the war, it was especially during the war that the advertisers would own broadcasting time as well, so that a broadcaster was --