Playing the Numbers

Los Angeles' independent KTLA, the first station to televise an atomic-bomb explosion (TIME, May 5, 1952), last week unveiled what may turn out to be a fissionable little package for TV's idea-starved programmers. The show is nothing more than good old Bingo, dressed up in a new name--Marco--and given a dog-food manufacturer (Thoro-Fed) for a sponsor instead of the Ladies' Aid Society. But it has one great advantage over most audience-participation shows: every home viewer can compete every week.

To play Marco, a viewer picks up a special card (limit: three) at his grocer's, fills it out by writing his own combination of numbers in the blank spaces (e.g., in the five blanks in the "M" column he may write any numbers from 1 to 25; under the "A" column, any from 26 to 50). He sends the completed card to KTLA, keeping a duplicate for himself.

On the air the M.C. picks numbered pingpong balls out of a big plastic bowl. As he calls out each number, his assistant ("Miss Marco") posts the number on a giant Marco card on the wall. When a line is filled, the M.C. calls it a game and announces a special phone number (different for each game to avoid jamming circuits). Viewers call in if they think they have won, are kept hanging on the line until their cards are checked, then are announced as winners. (Some first-night prizes: a TV set, a dishwasher, a trip for two to Hawaii.)

KTLA's General Manager Klaus Landsberg was amazed when the mail brought 20,000 Marco cards before the first program. After the show he began to get telegrams and calls from other TV stations asking how to set up the game. Commented Los Angeles Mirror TV Columnist Hal Humphrey gloomily and probably accurately: ". . . Intuition and past experience with the sheeplike tendencies of TV program directors lead me to believe that we haven't seen the end of it, only the beginning."

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