Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

NEWSREELSFORTV 285
reader. The biggest demand for news is from the local viewer, the
people who support your station, and in most cases they are much
more interested in what is going on down the road than what happened
in China last week. Human interest beginning in the home
town is what they want. If they see places they recognize on the
screen and see familiar faces and figures, interest is sustained. But
a shot of the UN, while a very praiseworthy organization,
half as likely to appeal to the people in, say, Albuquerque, as are
is not
shots of New Mexico fiestas. A point to watch here is the risk of not
seeing the wood for the trees; that is, ignoring some highly interesting
local event because of the thrill of big names somewhere else.
The average human is a "ham" at heart and loves nothing better
than to see himself on a movie screen, the larger in terms of
audience the better. If it were not for this, how can one account
for the sale of so many home movie outfits? If the local citizenry
know your station makes and shows home town news films taken in
places where they are likely to be, they will make a practice of tuning
in to watch and your Hooper, Neilson, Conlan, Pulse, Radox, or
what have you ratings will go up.
Human interest is something that always gets 'em! The bigger
the event and the person concerned, usually the better chance
there is of dressing it up for television. If it is a big event by local
standards but not really front page stuff, it can be made more so
by window dressing. Most people respond to the magic words,
"We are going to televise your show," by being eager to do anything
to cooperate. For instance, suppose the Veteran's Administration
declares a surplus on housing funds and decides to build
a swimming pool at the site of the latest housing project. It can
be a mediocre affair with the mayor digging
the first sod with a
shovel and everyone not too interested, or it can be a slap-up show
with the mayor using a bulldozer to start the excavation. A word
in his ear before the day will usually be sufficient to start things
working, if it is worked properly. The foregoing applies equally
well to what we are going to discuss next self-produced news-
reels and is probably more pertinent to that topic.
The reader is assumed to be in the process of forming a tele-