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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Int, The Public Looks in on AA Part 1 of 2.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-int-the-public-looks-in-on-aa-part-1-of-2.mp3 Duration: 00:42:18
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The following program was taken from Tape 10 up in Toronto. The subject is The Public Looks In on AA. Welcome to our panel this afternoon on The Public Looks In on AA. My name is Beth, and I am an alcoholic, and it's good to be here. Hi, Beth. Hi. Shall we have a moment of silence? And during this moment, let us think of all of the wonderful recoveries that have been made during this past 30 years.
Will you join me in the serenity prayer? God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I would like to explain our anonymity tradition. There may be some who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. If so, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or member be identified by full name in published or broadcast reports of our meetings.
The assurance of anonymity is essential to our affairs' efforts to help other alcoholics, and our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. I would like to introduce your chairman for this afternoon. He's a gentleman who is an AA trustee of our General Service Board. He was elected to the board in April of 1964, following two years of service as a director of AA World Services, Inc.
He is currently chairman of the General Service Board Public Information Committee, and I'd like you to meet Murray. Thank you, Beth. My name is Murray Whitsitt. I'm an alcoholic. Hi. I've been a member of the New Canaan, Connecticut group ever since I joined AA. As Beth has told you, I'm an alcoholic member of the board of trustees and currently chairman of the Public Information Committee. This committee dates back to 1956.
Up to then, our public relations had been very ably handled by Bill himself, and it was not without some debate that the Public Information Committee was formed, for despite our twelfth step, which enjoins us to carry the message to other alcoholics, our eleventh tradition says that our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. Many members of Alcoholics Anonymous feared that we were going in for promotion.
However, the eleventh tradition in its entirety reads, our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films. This pretty well defined the meaning of the word promotion, it seems to me. We can inform any and all about our program of recovery, so long as we don't use the customary techniques of promotion, talking about our wonderful individual members as people and individuals.
Not only can we, are we permitted to talk about our program, but we feel we have an obligation to keep the public informed. The 1956 conference approved the following statement of A.A.'s movement-wide public information policy. Quote, in all public relations, A.A.'s sole objective is to help the still suffering alcoholic.
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Always mindful of the importance of personal anonymity, we believe this can be done by making known to him and to those who may be interested in his problem, our own experience as individuals and as a fellowship in learning to live without alcohol. We believe that our experience should be made available to all who express sincere interest. We believe further that all efforts in this field should always reflect our awareness that many outside A.A. are equally concerned with the serious problem of alcoholism.
End quote. Actually, A.A. could never have got off the ground by word of mouth alone. The Jack Alexander article in the Saturday Evening Post in March 1941 brought an explosion in membership. And this article actually set the public information policy. I, for one, am grateful that the members then decided to help this writer to get and to publish everything he possibly could about how A.A. works without disclosing the names of members.
Communications, of course, in the broadest sense, ranges from the colic announcing cry of an infant to the simultaneous TV broadcast on both sides of the Atlantic by a Telstar satellite. And communications for our purposes ranges from carrying the message person to person, public meetings, and A.A.'s going out and talking to groups of all kinds, to published and broadcast material. There are now local information committees throughout the United States and Canada, many of which are doing a really great job.
And I sometimes think that the most meaningful public relations, public information, is what occurs at the local level, right in the community where the alcoholic lives. My father was a Baptist preacher down in southern Illinois, a circuit writer. He used to tell the story of a man who stopped in a backwoods country store and asked for onions. The storekeeper said he didn't have none. But as he left, the proprietor turned to his wife and said, You suppose that darn fool meant ingards?
And he called to the man as he was getting in his buggy and said, Did you mean ingards? The guy said he guessed he probably did. And the store owner said, Shucks, we got plenty of them. It isn't just our job to create increased public understanding of our fellowship. We have to also try to prevent misunderstandings. And you don't do it overnight. You don't do it once and let it go. How many people still think we accept money from the general public because they think anybody who is asking for money for alcohol are asking for it for AA?
How many people think we run rest homes and hospitals? And how many think that all of us use our names at the public level because a few do occasionally? And for every person who reads or listens attentively, there are several who don't. In the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, there is this statement, Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. This makes it sound as if any alcoholic can do it.
This is apparently not so. But although our method is admittedly not universally applicable, and although an estimated membership of around 400,000 is pretty darn impressive, there are too many still suffering sick alcoholics to please us. Therefore, it's incumbent on us, I believe, to make all the facts about our recovery program available at all times in as many different ways as possible. Now, there's a modern thing that I don't understand at all.
I wouldn't even believe it if I didn't see it two or three times a week in my own home. It's hard for me to believe that photographs of people in action with all their words and motions and other sounds
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actually sent through space from great distances to my living room. It's hard for me to believe it, although I see it all the time with my own eyes. Television is a tremendously powerful communications medium. We have a man here who understands it. Herbert Karl Barg spent 32 years with the Columbia Broadcasting System, where he went from the great advertising agency, N.W. Air. For his last 12 years with CBS, he was director of program practices for television.
His department of 45 people, located in New York and Hollywood, was charged with the interpretation and implementation of the network's policies as they applied to both program and commercial matter. This activity included working with public service broadcast material and with public service organizations. He has now retired from CBS and is active as a consultant for Ted Bates & Company, a large New York advertising agency with a number of foreign offices.
His activity at Ted Bates calls for working with creative people to ensure conformance to high standards of all commercial broadcast material. And now we can hear him, Mr. Herbert Karl Barg. Applause I've just learned that your chairman is a neighbor of mine. I live in Darien, Connecticut, a town that's had a little publicity during the past year. And it's still going on. And I'm sure it's in keeping with some of the subjects that have been under discussion this week.
Because broadcasting occupies some part of almost everybody's life, to be objective about it is not a simple matter. In my case, the broadcasting industry has occupied 32 years of my experience and existence. How I could stand it for 32 years, I don't know. At the end of that period, with no axe to grind, I can honestly say that I am thoroughly biased in its favor and in the remarkable stimulus that it gives to business activity.
Nor do you find such a thing as the small-town rule. He's gone forever. And the small-town women are as well-dressed and as well-informed as their counterparts in the metropolitan centers. I believe that television has had a tremendous influence in this area. That is my vantage point, the only vantage point from which I can assess broadcasting's responsibility. My hope is that in this assessment I will not exemplify the research man who was drowned crossing a river with an average depth of three feet.
And from this standpoint of my bias, the first responsibility of broadcasting is to meet the moral obligation of its creation. Within that frame of reference, its next responsibility is to perpetuate its survival and to realize its own potential. Broadcasting's responsibility means a number of different things. Whatever it means, this responsibility rests finally with the individual station licensed to serve a designated area.
It is plain that unless the management of the station lives up to its responsibilities to its stockholders, the station will either go out of existence or have to be sold. Those are the plain facts of life. Since a large number of stations are affiliated with networks, failure to carry with reasonable regularity the network's commercial programs, it will cut down the network revenue, thus affecting the ability of the network to provide proper program service for its affiliated stations to broadcast to their communities.
Another responsibility or obligation of the station is to broadcast programs which are designed to attract and satisfy large audiences within the community it serves. Now, some of the critics of the medium decry television's efforts to appeal to large audiences. I am certain… I am certain, in spite of this not-too-carefully-thought-out criticism, you will agree that should the
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station not do this, there would be a serious question as to whether it was properly serving the set owners in the area where it was licensed. I happen to be a trustee of a library in Connecticut. I can't imagine this library, for example, discharging its obligation to the community by filling its stacks with books at the Marcel Proust level. Certain limitations are inherent in any medium that directs its appeal to the mass. These limitations are naturally concerned with the responsibility to consider the tastes and needs of minority groups. The problem of appealing to these special interests of smaller audiences and at the same time providing service to as large an audience as possible is not a simple matter.
Being the same thing to all men, the implied responsibility of the license to broadcast for the public interest, convenience, and necessity, that's government language, is very much like the position in which the man found himself when his aunt presented him with two ties for Christmas. When he wore one of them to satisfy the dear old lady, her eyes filled with tears as she said, you don't like the other one. I experienced this tug-of-war between special interests when I was at CBS in charge of program practices and television. The chairman has explained my department, so I won't go into that. But as a consequence, I've been exposed to varying degrees of pressure from more groups than I can recollect. Most of them were intensely forthright, but ranged from alpha to omega in organizational purpose and character. For instance, executive producers and producers. There's a difference. Directors, story editors, casting directors, film editors, and sometimes their relatives and friends. Script writers, sales managers, advertising managers, presidents of companies, millions of vice presidents, hypnotists, extrasensory perceptionists, Buddhists, spies from behind the Iron Curtain. Believe me, they've come to us.
Phrenologists, physiognomists, antediluvian sectionists, psychiatrists, psychologists, handwriting experts, the ancient order of the Hibernians. Almost every racial, ethnic, and religious group, including three ministers from Pennsylvania who wanted us to cancel out the Playhouse 90 series on behalf of wrestling. The American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, the American Humane Association, Pawn Shop Associations, a group opposed to making a laughingstock out of men's hairpieces. The Funeral Directors Association, Parole Officers Association, the FBI, the FTC, the FDA, the NAACP, and the NCAA.
B'nai B'rith, the American Library Association, astrologers, subliminal perceptionists, and a small group of ladies who objected to a Revlon nail enamel commercial because the shade was designated as red caviar. There were endless numbers of actors and actresses with their managers, lawyers, and sponsors, police and fire departments, horse racing touts, the National Association of Broadcasters, et cetera, et cetera. Now this almost endless parade of groups naturally came forward, each to present to the network a self-serving point of view. This is as it should have been, because although a few were not only unreasonable, but downright militant, many were extremely helpful. Furthermore, the network's decision-making process was honed sharp by this abrasive action of opinion and counter-opinion.
Interestingly, in this welder of ebb and flow of self-interest, Alcoholics Anonymous loomed conspicuously for its dignity, its restraint, and its high principles in dealing with the network. The Federal Communications Commission of the United States and its counterpart in Canada have accepted as an operating principle the need to allocate frequencies so that they can serve as many people as possible.
It would be a waste of facilities if this implied mandate of the license to broadcast were not carried out. Hence, the station operator has a natural urge, aside from the standpoint of his survival in the broadcasting business,
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to actively engage the attention of as many people as he can. Now let's examine what we call this so-called mass audience. Except under unusual circumstances, four out of five potential viewers will not be watching an individual channel, even during so-called prime time. Thirty to forty percent will not watch television at all, and many of the remainder will be watching a competing program. So this mass audience is really a minority audience to begin with, even though the total number of viewers is an impressive figure. A broadcaster is compelled to use every effort to enhance the size of this minority.
I'm not revealing any professional programming techniques when I tell you he doesn't achieve this by scheduling a program, for instance, like How to Stuff a Now. I just want to mention the subject of audience ratings very briefly. They have recently been the whipping boy of almost every critic in television. Certainly, individual judgment is not infallible. The experiences on Broadway certainly prove that out.
The television industry must turn to people in the mass to get answers. Program ratings, more expensive and more elaborate than that used by any other medium, tell broadcasters that some programs are popular and some are not. These ratings may not be perfect, but I don't believe a broadcaster would be showing his dedication to responsibility by turning his back on them. There's a great deal of talk in the press, in government circles, within the broadcasting trade, and in general conversations that television programming is controlled by three or four men.
But these men have, or are presumed to have, mysterious powers of divining what people will look at, or failing that, the brutal, brazen, relentless power to force their programs and programming ideas on the helpless public. Now, don't you believe it. Don't you believe it for one minute. The man in control is the viewer with show me in his eyes and with his hand on the on-off change channel switch. He is far more responsible for the shaping of programs than the broadcaster himself.
An elaborate promotional red carpet is laid out to curry his favor because the stark reality which the broadcaster must face is that in any season between 40 and 50 percent of last year's new programs will have to go by the board. The dollars represented in these unsuccessful ventures are, to use a Hollywood term, astronomical. The standard complaint of what the trade refers to as the egghead is that broadcasters provide too many programs for mass audiences. If you will examine the rating books, the program on How to Stuff an Owl might have been a wiser choice than some of the programs in the middle of the list.
The problem lies in the scarcity of creative people, beginning with the all-important scriptwriter. A perfect example of this is the presence on this platform of Mr. J.P. Miller. How many J.P. Millers are there, and how many are available to television? Well, when you look at Mr. Miller, and I hope he won't mind my saying this, you're looking at the Hope Diamond among scriptwriters. Some time ago, CBS embarked on a project to prime the programming pump by offering $10,000 per script for a new program series, each program to be scripted by a different writer.
Because only a few qualified writers responded, the project had to be abandoned. This scarcity extends to producers, directors, actors, and believe it or not, even to cameramen. The legitimate theater, the publishing business, motion pictures, are also plagued by this dearth of creative talent. I'm sure that many of you share my nostalgia for the early days of television. The roller derbies, the lady wrestlers, the reruns of Popeye and Gene Autry. And how many remember Dagmar, the lady with the superb proportions who used to titillate the late evening audience? Boy, those were really the days.
Now, many today refer to this as the golden era of broadcasting. In retrospect, many fine productions seem to stand out. The truth is that the rate of failure on a critical basis in those days was probably as much as 80 percent.
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If you were to screen the kinescopes of this early television fare, you would realize that most of it was mediocre at the best, and our memory is haunted by the occasional standout. There is an aspect in seeking large audiences which one really can easily lose sight of. Now, here is what Gilbert Seldes wrote in the late 30s evaluating television. He said, Radio is important because people listen to it even when it is trivial. The audience which listened to the radio debate on the Supreme Court was created in the first place by Ed Wynn, Rudy Vallee, Amos Nandy, and Kate Smith.
I have a feeling that the most important thing for television is to make sure of its own popularity. Like the moving picture or the radio, television would act against its own nature if it did not try to be virtually a universal entertainment. And Mr. Seldes wrote these words almost 30 years ago. An occurrence early this year in New York clearly proved the wisdom of his words. On February 22, Walter Lippman broadcast on the Columbia Network from 10 to 11. The program achieved a rating of 10.3 in New York, a most respectable rating for a program of this kind.
Ten days later, Mr. Lippman made a widely publicized appearance before the United Nations from 8.30 to 9.15 p.m. This time, the TV viewers could see him on Channel 13 in New York, an educational channel, a good channel but devoted to special interests and material of restricted interest to the mass audience. His audience in that instance was so small, no figure was reported since the rating services give no detail on the audience size of programs with a rating of 1.4 or lower. Audiences tend to tune and stay tuned to broadcast facilities which over a long period of time have satisfied their needs.
In other words, whether you like Beverly Hillbillies or not, this program served as a springboard for Walter Lippman. Now, how does Alcoholics Anonymous fit into the broadcast spectrum? It fits in in the following area of responsibility of the medium. The responsibility for meeting the needs of groups known for the lack of a better word, the minority minority. And I trust you understand the word minority is not in a controversial sense.
Included in this classification is public service broadcasting, the community funds, public health and safety, appeals for support of broad-gauge governmental projects and other enterprises for which broadcasting can provide substantial support. The discharge of this responsibility, however, involves many factors present in public affairs programming not generally known or recognized by the viewing public.
While extensive cooperation by a number of people is sought and required by the producer of a documentary, it is vital to know what motivates this friendly hand of help. Is it entirely gratuitous or is there an unrecognized angle of self-interest? Has the integrity of the program been unknowingly sold down the river for the unannounced benefit of the person or group so freely offering help? The health field, for instance, has been somewhat difficult for broadcasters to evaluate in the allocation of public service cooperation. In the first place, the government of the United States is by far the largest contributor in many important health classifications.
Some charitable enterprises, in seeking to front-run in their categories, have incurred unfortunately high costs of administration and have not clearly spelled out how the money raised would be spent. One instance that I'm quite familiar with in the health field, this involved a new project already covered by a well-established public service institution. This new project had a famous name on its masthead. The investigation revealed that a relative of the famous name, while not part of the salaried staff, was given a really large expense account and was also scheduled for speech-making.
and was also scheduled for speech making at very fancy high prices.
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The result was that the large S extended to the sufferers was really small S, with only 50 cents out of every dollar raised, spent for the announced purpose of the project. This is what is known as a gray area in public service. Many will contend that this is the only way that you can prime the pump of public service giving and support. But every institution in public service started in this manner so as to avoid falling back on the tin cup.
Well, I know one institution that didn't start in this way and has never operated in that way. Alcoholics Anonymous, assembled here today. That is why networks or stations must have complete control of public service shows. It is vital that they have complete knowledge of all the source material, not only the material itself, but how it was secured. Only by complete participation in the myriad details and elements can networks or stations feel secure against embarrassing consequences.
One of the bulwarks in maintaining high standards and alert watchfulness in the public service field is an organization known as the Advertising Council. This is not a profit-making organization. It's entirely non-profit and in the public interest. Their whole purpose is to promote public service projects in mass media. In doing this, they have established criteria to which these projects must comply in order to secure support.
They also allocate time for campaigns so as to space them out throughout the year, thus avoiding overlap. For instance, CBS will not schedule public service material unless it meets the standards of the Advertising Council. As you know, Alcoholics Anonymous has full Advertising Council support and allocation. That broadcasting has met its responsibility in this area far exceeds what you might suspect.
When Judge Medina, chairman of the New York Bar Association's Committee on Mass Media, asked the Television Information Office for a list of programs that dealt with the law and legislative processes that had been broadcast by the three networks over a four-year period, he was surprised to learn that the list ran through more than 400 programs. Not all of these programs were designed for the single purpose of instructing people in legal procedures.
That's not the way of television. What television does best is to create a framework within which information and, for instance, public service can be transmitted, most often under the guise of entertainment or general enlightenment rather than pure instruction. This multiplying factor obviously extends the reach of the public service message many times over. One of the most graphic examples of this reach was the story of Alcoholics Anonymous as dramatized in The Days of Wine and Roses, created by Mr. J.P. Miller on Playhouse 90 on the Columbia Network and later repeated as a motion picture.
Millions of viewers saw this program and witnessed a vivid and dramatic demonstration of the good works of Alcoholics Anonymous integrated as a vital part of the storyline. I am certain that all of you realize the significance of this incident. Just to give you an idea of the impact of a program of this kind, this is just sort of gee whiz information, but the impact of television shows by estimate that more people have seen the performances of Shakespeare's plays in television and have been performed on all the world's stages in all the years since they were written.
Now, how can we raise the level of awareness of our people about what is going on in the world or about our culture, a great residue of world experience? Television offers endless opportunities to meet this challenge. Unfortunately, the institutions which could take advantage of these opportunities, the church and the school, have let go by the board thousands of programs which could have been studied or used as the basis for the intelligent consideration of almost all the matters that interest or concern us.
Think again about the program The Days of Wine and Roses. This is a better subject for a common viewing experience by the clergy, teachers, young people, and adults. Fortunately, there are some encouraging signs that attempts are being made by both church and schools, and I have the happy experience of having personally helped in such activities,
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working with two national church groups and with colleges and high schools. But there is much to be done. I recommend that Alcoholics Anonymous, working in advance of programs which include the Alcoholics Anonymous story, promote tie-in activity by churches and schools. The rich dividends that result in good to Alcoholics Anonymous would be limitless and would serve as a demonstration of how television, to use the words of a prominent TV producer, might save the world.
The coverage that Alcoholics Anonymous has had in television, within the range of my personal participation at CBS, is quite impressive. Aside from The Days of Wine and Roses, here are some of the network shows that I worked with. Never Again, produced by Alfred Hitchcock. The story was based upon the tragic consequences that resulted from a misunderstanding that caused a young lady to break away from her Alcoholics Anonymous discipline.
Another distinguished program in the Armstrong Circle Theater series called Journey to Oblivion dealt with the story of a socially prominent suburbanite wife who, as an alcoholic, refused to recognize her addiction to liquor until faced with a major crisis in her life. The Defenders series, a series devoted to themes sometimes of important social issues, last year presented a program called Drink Like a Lady.
This program dealt with the help that Alcoholics Anonymous gave to an alcoholic woman who had killed a man, presumably in self-defense, during an alcoholic blackout. The CBS series called The Nurses presented a program entitled Fly Shadow, dealing with a nurse who conceals, with nearly disastrous results, a woman's alcoholism because events in her own past caused her to take pity on the patient. There are others, but these examples are a demonstration of the best way that television can meet its responsibility in the area of public service.
Fortunate indeed is Alcoholics Anonymous that its principles and its unique character adapts itself so readily to storylines with deep human interest. Obviously, the integration of public service themes must be handled carefully and sparingly by the networks. They must be the result of self-inspiration of the scriptwriter. They cannot appear to be dragged in by the heels. As a result, the majority of television's coverage in behalf of formal public service campaigns is in the form of short filmed or recorded announcements.
Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, forgive me for always referring to the United States with all our Canadian friends present, but that's been the range of my experience, that its own brand of infinite wisdom does not permit a station or a network to take credit in the public service category for any entertainment programs into which public or social service material has been integrated.
Hence, the most effective forms of public service and broadcasting go unsung as far as the FCC is concerned. In addition to the Alcoholics Anonymous themes and programs I have mentioned, there have been brilliantly written and produced entertainment programs surrounding such important public problems as child adoption, unwed mothers, social disease, quackery in medicine, juvenile delinquency, and many others.
I realize that the Federal Communications Commission might plead difficulty in evaluating programs which marry entertainment or social service. Difficult as it may be, the FCC must give stations and networks incentive to broadcast public service in its most provocative form instead of only giving them public service credit for material which is comparatively trite and restricted in audience interest.
Our relationship with Alcoholics Anonymous when I was at CBS was indeed a very happy one. Here was a group held together by the strongest spiritual bonds, familiar trappings, formal public service organizations, the below-the-line necessities that didn't seem to exist, no broad-scale fundraising or drive for members, or elaborate administrative setup. I'm not critical of these devices because they are vital to most organizations.
I am only saying that when I came here last night, I was startled, just like I've been startled in the past,
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to come so quickly upon the good works of Alcoholics Anonymous. The pure gold is right on the surface, and the load runs very deep. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Carlebach. Thank you for the knowledge you've given us, for the ideas you've given us. And thank you for your most generous appraisal of AA's public relations attitude. It's my feeling that the television industry has been most generous in understanding of AA.
I believe that literally thousands have sought out AA because of what they've seen on television. And incidentally, the Advertising Council, which you mentioned, listed in their May-June radio-TV bulletin, this week, convention week, July 28th to July 4th, as AA Week. And this bulletin of theirs went to over 4,000 radio stations, more than 600 TV stations, and to all networks. And we at GSO have sent out, to all stations and networks, material to use during this week.
Announcements of various lengths, and slides and desk cards for use on TV. TV is a great door, which we must keep open.