The Busy Air

P:In Manhattan, station WOR-TV gave up last week on an experiment in nightlong (midnight to 7 a.m.) telecasting. Explained Pressagent Dick Jackson: "We found an eager audience of insomniacs, ginmill customers and, surprisingly, patients at veterans' hospitals. There were enough sponsors to break even. But the show needs more variety and at least one extra camera crew which would put us in the red. We expect to try again when we've digested the lessons we learned."

P:In Chicago, Kraft Foods Co. put up a bonus of $50,000 to be paid to the writer of the best original play seen this season on the Kraft TV Theater. The judges: Playwright Maxwell Anderson, Drama Critic (New York Herald Tribune) Walter Kerr, Actress Helen Hayes.

P:In London, commercial TV was buffeted by a survey revealing that, instead the estimated half million sets, only a scant 200,000 have been adapted to receive the commercial wave length. Result: sponsors are holding off until they can get more value for their money. For three consecutive days last week, there were no advertisers at all on morning telecasts.

P:In Burlington, Vt., Poet Louis Untermeyer looked on the bright side of television because "it will eventually boost the quality and reduce the quantity of fiction written in the U.S." Untermeyer thinks TV "can do a better job than the printed word on 'slick romances,' and people are reading less commercial fiction. But the novelist who has something to say will always have a market."

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