Wallflowers Join the Dance

Radio's eyebrows were raised last week: the boom in sustaining programs, the wallflowers of the industry, kept right on booming. For the 21st time this year a sponsor gave the nod to a sustainer: from now on Let's Pretend, a CBS sustainer for 13 years, will pretend for Cream of Wheat.*

Confused, sales-happy impresarios explain these unexpected invitations to the dance three ways: 1) Sponsors, well aware of the war-narrowed pattern of U.S. life, now prefer programs with established audiences to new gambles; 2) advertising agencies have not got the manpower to build new shows; 3) rather than a shot with unproved talent left by the draft, sponsors turn to a sustainer with known talent.

* Some other recent sales (and their ages as sustainers): BLUE NETWORK--Meet Your Navy (7 months), Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin St. (3 years); CBS--Report to the Nation (2 1/2 years), New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra (13 years); NBC--NBC Symphony Orchestra (6 years); MUTUAL--It Pays to Be Ignorant (5 months).

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