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Notable New     Yorkers
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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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middle America, or middle in the cultural spectrum, and it's only occasionally you'll find advertisers reaching for extremely high taste talent. And the audience certainly doesn't reach for it. That isn't the way you get the circulation.

The Philharmonic, for example, in the early days of television -- we scheduled the Philharmonic on Sunday afternoon. And then later we had the children's concerts in the prime time schedule. Children's concerts were done by Lenny [Leonard] Bernstein. And it could be demonstrated that when that program came on, it drove audience away from the schedule. And we used to talk about certain programs created a yellow fever zone -- the programs around them suffered from the presence of the key program. For example, if tonight the New York Philharmonic were to be broadcast, let's say, at nine o'clock, from nine to ten-thirty, the program at ten-thirty would have very little audience by comparison with its regular audience. The reason being that there is a limited market for serious music on television -- a limited market even in CD's or LP's or radio or anything else. WQXR built its reputation around serious music. WNYC, to a certain extent, has done the same thing. But these are not big rating stations, these are very specialized stations in terms of audience appeal. If we put on the Philharmonic tonight at nine o'clock until ten-thirty and, as I indicated, the ten-thirty program would be affected by it, if we announced that was going to be on every week from nine to ten-thirty, ultimately the program coming up to the nine o'clock program would be affected. And certainly nobody would want to be at ten-thirty because the audience would be too low. To get around that problem, I pushed very hard for moving the children's concerts and other special programs, that had small audiences but were commendable programs and deserved airing, I proposed and pushed to float these programs in various parts of the schedule. In a way to surprise the audience, and maybe they would -- the members of the audience -- would be attracted and find something





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