Guiding Light discussion thread

[SantabarbaraNBC]

Any Santa Barbara fans here?

We are trying to get the show released on DVD. Please "like" the facebook page and join our campaign.

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Thanks!

[amybrickwallace]

Does anyone remember Laryssa Lauret's 1977 (?) stint as Simone Kincaid? I'm curious about it by watching her on the reruns of The Doctors on Retro TV.

[SoapDope]

A lot of soap material on this youtube page.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvkATfshwmAz_1aE9xgv-mw/videos

[saynotoursoap]

I do. It was far too short. Laryssa's Simone was the antithesis of Karen Werner. She was warm, soft, and more attuned to her emotions. The Dobsons had big plans for Bill and Simone. Unfortunately, audience reaction became so vociferously negative that the producers insisted the story be truncated as quickly as possible. Laryssa was let go six months into a three-year contract.

[amybrickwallace]

That's a shame. So far, I haven't been able to find any clips of Laryssa as Simone. Was GL the last soap she was on?

[cassadine1991]

Anyone know who played Mallet's voice? Was it Mark Derwin?

[Paul Raven]

Guiding Light from Radio to TV

Few sponsors realized it at the time, but a brand new era in network programing may have begun on 30 June. That was the day when P&G's perennial radio drama The Guiding Light became the first "combination radio TV show" on the major networks. It was also the date when a widely held advertising theory—that radio and TV programs, outside of simulcasts, have to be planned separately for each air medium—was exploded. One of the brightest stars in Procter & Gamble's sudsy galaxy of some dozen daytime serial dramas in both radio and video, The Guiding Light is unique in air advertising today. The program is on twice daily; once for radio, and once for TV. In both shows, the story, cast, and production staff are the same. It works like this: The 2,750,000 housewives who dial the domestic troubles of the radio Guiding Light each weekday at 1:45 p.m. on CBS Radio hear a show that continues the story of heroine Meta Roberts in the same radio format as in the past. Then, at 2:30 p.m.. another million housewives and there's little duplication between radio and TV audiences—see and hear the same script acted out by the same cast, with only minor changes in format on CBS TV. Net result for P&G: The radio version holds its regular audience (the figures above are Nielsen averages) in non- TV areas, and its big radio audience in TV areas. The T V version adds a new audience on top of the AM version. P&G thus has a continuous hedge against the day when TV will cover the nation, and will have made serious dents in daytime network radio.

Guiding Light does a better-than-average job of being a good show in two media at once. The radio version is not merely the sound track for the TV show, as is the radio version of Groucho Marx's on Bet Your Life: it is done in a way consistent with the highest standards of radio dramatic production. At the same time, the video version is not just a radio show with a radio cast before a TV camera, as often occurs in simulcasts like Voice of Firestone or We the People. And. this trickv balancing act has been achieved without blowing P&G s costs sky-high. By SPONSOR'S estimate, production of the radio version of Guiding Light costs P&G about $3,000 a week, more or less. This is well in line with the cost average of the two dozen daytime serials presently on the air in network radio. The TV version is brought in for about $8,500 for production costs. Figuring in time charges, this means that the radio version of Guiding Light delivers audience at the rate of about $1.65-per-l,000- homes. The video version delivers viewing homes at the rate of about S The video version delivers viewing homes at the rate of about $8.00 per $1000 which is slightly better than average for TV.

Here are highlights of how Guiding Light's production team — producer Dave Lesan. radio-TV director Ted Corday. production and business manager John Egan, and assistant producer Lucy Ferri—make one show behave like two

1. The program's scripts are written just once, unlike the radio-TV Mr. District Attorney (see SPONSOR 22 October 1951) where two separate scripts are used for the AM and video versions. Writer Irna Phillips turns out what is essentially an "actable"' radio script, sends it in with a description of how she visualized the action when she wrote it. (This is a money saver. Miss Phillips doesn't have to spend twice as much time and be paid twice as much as she did when writing Guiding Light scripts in the radio-only days.')

2. The scripts themselves are done in radio style, but are typed and mimeographed using the right-hand half of the page. The left-hand half is blank, as in TV scripts. Thus, the scripts do double duty; they are used in their original form for radio, then used again for TV with cuts and pencilled in action. Saving is about $125 a week in mimeo charges.

3. Radio rehearsal is skillfully utilized to give what director Ted Corday calls "a leg up on TV rehearsals. ' The radio show is rehearsed for its regulation hour and 45 minutes the day before the live TV show. It is then taped for radio presentation the following day. While the actors are still in the studio. Corday starts to block out the TV show and gives the cuts which will bring it down to the right length for television. About $50 a week is saved in rehearsal hall charges. (That's $2,000 a year.) Also, the tape recorder saves money in radio rehearsal, gives a "fluff-free v show.

4. . The TelePrompTer is used on the TVshow. While this gadget costs a minimum of $30 an hour for the "Class A"' battery I three reading units, plus equipment and operator), producer Lesan feels that it actually saves money in the long run. "We don't let our actors use it as a crutch.'' Lesan states, "but it does give them a sense of security and cuts down on the amount of rehearsal we need. Also, this feeling of security is transferred to the quality of the show, and gives the sponsor a better program for his money, which is itself a saving."

5. . Special effects are held to a minimum. The TV Guiding Light is done with a bare hour and 30 minutes of camera rehearsal daily, so there's no time to fool around with trick shots or fancy tv production "A recent script called for a scene to be played in a car. Then, the car was to crash in the fog. and roll over a couple of times. This was easy to do in radio with sound effects. In the TV version, we played the identical scene on a park bench instead of in a trick car set. and saved ourselves about $300. Then, we had the car crash offstage."

6. . All sets and props, down to the last item, are rented from CBS TV. Reason: After careful study of the relative merits of stockpiling its own properties and sets vs. renting from the network's extensive supply. Compton felt it would be cheaper to use the latter method. This way, a minimum of Compton manpower is involved in keeping track of sets and props, and the network must handle all the repairs and maintenance of permanent sets. These are just a few of the problems and solutions which Compton has dealt with in handling the two-way serial. There were many others, some large and some small. "One of the first things we learned was to respect the physical capabilities and tempers of our cast, which we brought over virtually intact from radio into TV," producer Lesan recalls, "lrna Phillips is famous for her scripts which center around the dialogue of just two people. In radio, this is easy. A week of two-character dialogue in TV would put the actors in the hospital. The strain of memorizing and acting would be tremendous, and the rehearsal would wear them out. "Compared to our old methods in handling the radio-only Guiding Light, we used more actors and we use each of them less frequently. All of our basic cast is under contract, and we guarantee them a certain number of appearances within each 13-week cycle. This keeps our cast happy, because a day's work on the TV show practically removes the possibility of their doing other TV work for two days. "We also work much further ahead in all phases of the show, both in the drama content and in the commercials. It used to he in radio that we could work oil changes and substitutions as tight as three days ahead and still get away with it. Now. the smallest leeway we allow ourselves is three weeks.' Since almost any major TV show has far more "delayed broadcasts ' than a major radio show, due to the clearance problem in the large number of one-station and two-station TV markets, some special difficulties had to be solved by Compton. Of these, perhaps the biggest headache was in dealing with a favorite commercial tactic of Procter & Gamble -premiums and contests. These are fairly simple in radio. The commercials start plugging the offer or contest when it starts, and they stop plugging it when the promotion is over. In TV, with some kinescope stations running three weeks behind the radio schedule (although they are day-and-date in all the interconnected TV' areas where the show is seen live) the problem was different. Some TV stations, Compton realized, would be starting a premium offer in the kinescope commercials long after it bad started on radio. Later, they would still be making the offer while the radio version was concluded. How Compton got around the problem : A traffic system was set up to route film commercials to the kinescope stations for local insertion. Commercials containing a P&G offer are sent to these stations so that they can be spliced in for a simultaneous start with radio. This is continued until the kines catch up with the offer. Then, when the kinescopes start to run past the closing date of the offer, film commercials minus the offer are sent to TV stations so that the out-of-date commercials can be removed locally. (This problem is not peculiar to TV in Guiding Light's air operation. Several radio outlets air Guiding Light from transcriptions. Here, the agency sends out special e.t.'s with revised commercials similar to the revised TV kinescopes.) In many ways, the radio-TV Guiding Lights are designed around the commercials. just as their production and rehearsal schedules are geared around the physical capabilities of the production staff and actors.

For one thing, Compton discarded the idea of doing a simulcast of the two shows (apart from artistic problems) in order to get the maximum value from the two types of commercials. In radio, P&G feels it does its best selling job on Guiding Light with alternate sponsorship each day, using a format that calls for a billboard opening and a teaser dramatic scene. The commercials are written in odd lengths of about a minute and 20 seconds. Generally speaking, the show's radio commercials are designed to be used only on network radio. The TV commercials are something else again. Compton deliberately revamped the TV format so that it contains essentially the same amount of drama as the radio show, but has an open-middle-close commercial format. Each commercial is a minute in length, and is on film. Result: The film commercials, being a standard length, can be put to double and triple use. In the case of the P&G film commercials on Guiding Light, a good deal of money is saved all around by doubling the films on a traffic schedule as commercials in the P&G-sponsored Fireside Theatre. Then, they are put to even further use as minute film commercials in P&G TV spot campaigns, since thev are designed to stand on their own feet. out of program context. As far as actual P&G product selling goes,"' states Constance Reid, assistant to the head of Compton's Radio &TVCommercial Department, '"both radio and TV commercials use the same basic tliPines when products are being sold in both media. The difference is in the commercial technique. Generally, radio commercials for a product like Duz will cover more product points with more copy than TV. A television commercial will cover fewer points with fewer words, and put much more emphasis on the visual aspects."' P&G had thought of trying a combination radio-and-TY arrangement on a daytime serial long before it actually happened with Guiding Light. About a year ago, the first major step was taken by making up pilot kines of two Guiding Light scripts chosen at random, bringing them in for a total of $5,000. "We made these pilot films to answer just one question." Compton's V. P. Lewis H. Titterton. agency radio-TV director, told SI'ONSOR. "We wanted to know if sight could be added to a simple radio script to give you a

good TV show." Agency and client ran the kinescopes off again and again, and finally decided that writer Irna Phillips wrote with such a visual touch that remaking her show for TV would he feasible. Also, the cast members looked and acted their parts, particularly since lrna Phillips had long been writing the show to fit the actors. But only when Compton reported last May that the show was ready to be produced, did P&G commit itself to the deal. "Many problems outside of production had to be worked out." Compton V.P. George Chat field, who supervises the Ivory and Crisco accounts, told SPONSOR. "The show is a kind of common property, in varying degrees, of several P&G brands the agency represents. A lot of meetings had to be held to work out the details of what brands would be featured on the show, to what extent they would be featured, how the whole thing would interlock with other media campaigns of these brands, and from which brand ad budgets the money would come.' As SPONSOR went to press, this was the lineup of products on the two shows. Costs of the operation are distributed among the brands in accordance with the extent to which they are featured. The AM version of the soaper now sells Ivory Flakes, and Duz. There are two main commercials in the show, of odd lengths. Ivory Flakes has full sponsorship one day, Duz has it the next, then Ivory Flakes again, etc. The TV version of the program sells three products: Ivory Soap, Duz, and Crisco. Three one-minute film commercials are scanned in each show. Two of them always feature various uses of Ivory Soap. The other minute slot is alternated between Duz and Crisco. As a brand, Duz is the only one which is on both radio and TV shows. Has P&G's operation with the two Guiding Lights set a pattern for a new brand of combined radio and TV programing? Within P&G's own tremendous broadcast campaigns, there is talk now of making similar conversions of Big Sister and Ma Perkins. Other serial sponsors, like Lever Brothers, General Foods, Sterling Drug, have followed the operation closely. Says Producer Dave besan: "With careful planning, any radio sponsor with a good radio show can do the same thing, getting the same potential results."

Edited March 4, 2015 by Paul Raven

[slick jones]

That's Jerry Pacific doing the voice over of Mallet.

[DRW50]

There are 4 parts of this (the episode is incomplete).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0z-Jd_BX8w

[slick jones]

There's an episode on We Love Soaps today from 1953, Kathy Grant's trial. I don't know if I ever saw it before, but it was pretty good. Mandel Kramer as D.A Richard Hanley commands the court room.

Edited March 5, 2015 by slick jones

[DRW50]

That one's popped up here and there in various forms - for years I just saw a chopped up version, then a full one came around.

I wish someone could put out some of the mid/late '50s episodes that I saw 4-5 years ago.

[NothinButAttitude]

[saynotoursoap]

Thank you, Paul Raven. I find the production side very fascinating, and I had not read this before. I appreciate you taking the time and energy to share it.

[Khan]

Same here. Thank you, Paul Raven, for sharing that article.

Ironically, I think GL (the TV version) had about the same number of regular viewers at the end of its run as the radio version had listeners at the time the article was written.

Could you imagine, though, the insanity that would have ensued had Irna and the rest of the production team attempted separate stories for the radio and TV versions?

[NothinButAttitude]