Sixty-Sixth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS STODENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG. * ANN ARBOR, MICH. * Phone NO 2-3241 'Advertising for the American Taste' -1956 Opinions Are Free, th Wtll Prevail" torials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. DAY, APRIL 20, 1956 NIGHT EDITOR, LEE MARKS Regents Cannot Overlook Student, Board Advice on Rent Hikes TODAY the University Regents will consider, among many other things, a proposed raise of $20 in Residence Halls room and board rates. Similar rent hikes have been almost annual affairs for the last four years, but action tak- en earlier this week shows that the present proposed raise and all future raises are not going to be mildly approved byall bodies con- cerned. Neither the Inter-House Council 'nor the Residence Halls Board of Governors gave an unqualified "yes" to this latest proposal. Both these bodies refused to continue their actions of past years. They have decided that self-liquidating Residence Halls and periodi- cal rent hikes are infeasible and demoralizing, and that these systems cannot continue unin- vestigated. Furthermore, the Board of Governors has asked to have its position in determining Resi- dence Halls fees clarified. The present Board refuses to continue "rubber stamping" appro- vat where the effect of its approval is uncer- tain. It is with the Regents today that the cer- tainty of the Board of Governors and the IHC remains; the Regents have the opinions and feelings of the students and of the Residence Halls Board before them. WHAT IS TO become of this advice, what use the Regents will make, of it, can only be determined by the Regents. They now know where the Residence Halls administration and occupants stand on the problem of annual rent increases. Should the Regents today do no more than rubber stamp the propdsed raise "yes," they will be overlooking the judgment of the Inter- House Council, and the opinion of the Resi- dence Halls Board of Governors. The students of the IHC and the members of the Residence Hall Board qualify to be taken seriously. -VERNON NAHRGANG Krush and Bulge' KRUSH AND BULGE, the fun-loving, free- loading rover boys and wandering sales- men, are off hitting the highspots again. Communist Party Secretary General Nikita Krushchev and Soviet Premier Nikolai Bul- ganin, whom the British have aptly monickers ed 'Krush and Bulge,' are now in the United Kingdom to peddle their wares. Their homey tactics remind one of the drummers of patent lpedicine and snake oil remedies during the Wild West days in this country. The brand of m'nedicine the boys carry is good for any- thing that ails the world, looks okay, tastes suspiciously as if it contains something other than what is advertised, and will, in all proba- bility, choke the drinker, if it doesn't do some- thing worse to him. This trip, though, it looks like Krush and Bulge are getting a little different reception. than that to which they have been accustomed. On their last jaunt, to southern Asia, people turned out by the millions and cheered their every move and word. Even when they com- mitted serious social errors, the boys weren't chastised 4adly and succeeded in convincing a lot of people that they really have the salve for the earth's ailments. But this time they are up against a some- what more sophisticated and skeptical audi- ence. The reception at the airport, while dig- nified and according to striped pants diplo- matic protocol on the part of Sir Anthony Eden and his offcials, was pretty much in a gay carnival spirit with a dose of honest curio- sity as to what Krush and Bulge actually look like. After all, it's not every day one can see a couple of-world wide celebrities and national leaders hamming it up. The holiday atmos-, phere amongst the people indicates that while everyone's eyes are on them, Krush and Bulge aren't being taken too seriously. SIR ANTHONY and the government also have plans for the jovial visitors which call for a different program. Instead of cavorting about the countryside drumming up sales, Krush and Bulge will be presented, in a series of conferences with Britain's leaders, with some rather important questions, including the settling of differences over the German uni- fication problem and arriving at some solu- tion to the Palestine conflict. The rover boys may have to do some thinking and earn their board instead of getting a free sight seeing excursion. With all the travelling Krush and Bulge do out of Russia, one wonders who's running things while they're gone. If President Eisenhower takes a couple of days off to go golfing in Georgia, somebody screams that he's not doing his job. Mr. Ste- venson took a cut at his opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination Senator Kefauver for neglecting his Senatorial duties while campaigning. Secretary of State Dulles is always under fire for gallivanting about the world instead of tending to the operation of the Department of State. Do Krush and Bulge suffer the same thing from their envious but less fortunate col- leagues? Probably not, at least not out loud. But that's the advantage to being on the top of the pile in a totalitarian hierarchy. -DICK HALLORAN Culture and -The Salesman By EDWARD STANLEY (EDITOR'S NOTE: Edward Stanley is the manager of Public Service Pro- grams for the National Broadcasting Company. Previously he spent ten years as a newspaperman with the the Associated Press sa well as news- papers in the West and South.) ATELEVISION network leads several lives, or lives in several worlds, at least, in order to main- tain its existence. One of these, certainly, is its function as anIm portant factor in the unique American distribution s y s t e m, which is by all odds the most re- markable and successful the world has yet known. It is rather startling when you stop to think about it, that within a very few years this new medium, television, is now pressing the traditional media for primacy. It is this aspect of television which holds the gi'eatest professional in- terest-I hesitate to say fascina- tion-for the world of advertising. I should like to point out, how- ever, that as individuals we are all greatly interested in what I describe as superior programs, about which more later. It is at this point, the recognition of tel- evision's power and efficiency as an advertising instrument, that our paths merge. Anyone who examines without bias the vigorous and increasingly exciting pattern of television in America, where it is conducted by highly competitive private indus- try and supported by advertising (which does a further good) and that of other countries with gov- enmental or quasi-governmental controls, would be forced to the conclusion that the fare here is infinitely superior, rich and wide- ly varied. Any week there are more good programs than any of us has time to look at. If we were not in com- petition for the.audience in order to sell things to them, I wonder whether this would be so. THERE ISN'T. any question that television sells a lot of goods. It is amazing, far beyond any ex- pectations. But important as is this sales function-not merely vital-this isn't the sole, nor even the principal responsibility which television has. No one would maintain that the chief responsibility of the printing press and moveable type was to sell things. It is certainly useful in that respect, but its great re- sponsibility - for which in this country it was blessed with the First Amendment to the Constitu- tion-is to communicate facts and ideas. So it is with television. All of us in this industry, which em- braces the advertising world With great affection, have a prilary responsibility to make this tre- mendous new medium of commu- nication of the greatest possible value to the American people and not to permit it to degenerate into a living room toy. And while we are doing this we have to hold the interest and the attention of the truly mass audience or go out of business. In truth, we have to reach a high proportion of the American public every day. A na- tional magazine with two or three millon circulation every week can canter along very nicely. A net- work would die. So, here is the problem. How to upgrade our programming con- stantly, that is, introduce ele- ments of culture into our entire program schedule, and still hold the interest, the intense interest of the giant audience. We have to do both to satisfy our social ob- ligations. Well, it has been notorious in our folklore that cultural pro- grams are for small agglutinations of egg-heads, the size audience you could engrave on the head of a pin. Just as it was notorious that Shakespeare could never draw a full house, the kind of full house we have to maintain our usefulness (i.e., pay the rent) as a part of the distribution machin- ery. Ballet, opera, serious drama, for the birds. But I am sure you are ahead of me now. WE HAVE DEVELOPED a the- ory which has decisively influ- enced the entire industry. Its most descriptive characterization is the value-theory of television pro- gramming, and it rests on the idea that no one ever went broke over- estimating the intelligence of the American people. Our belief is that in order to hold and continue to attract the mass audience we must program up and not down. We must con- stantly seek to increase the re- ward we give a vewer in return for the time he gives us. And we can do this only by increasing the depth of experience, both in the- ater and real-world, by continu- ously extending the areas of in- terest, of excitement, of under- standing and of response. I think we do know for sure that there is no bottom to the hunger of the American people for richer experience, and that EDWARD STANLEY .. . the hunger is there being set for a great revival of? learning, such as followed the Middle Ages. And it may very well be this time that it will be a great popular revival of interest in the cultural world. Television makes it easy, in the privacy of your own home, and popular, because we are a popu- lar medium, because what you watch on television your friends and neighbors will be watching also. Certain it is, in any case, that this new great instrument of com- munication, with all its impact, not yet fully measured, will bring about vast personality changes in the American people. We are go- ing to have more time-more lei- sure time, many of us-and it would be a pity to waste it all. "It Says Here That Grace Kelly Got Married" The artist in America has come into his own. He may be odd, but he is pretty well understood and respected. A president and prime minister have made the Sunday painter respectable. Robert Frost- and Carl Sandburg are among the most beloved figures of our time. And all of us could add, other names. I suppose culture has some such appeal. Maybe that explains this running tide. But I doubt it, and so do you. We have no tight little intellectual elite in this country, some one per cent of the people for whom we produce a special program. The basic tenet of de- mocracy is that the opportunity for. knowledge and self-improve- ment is open to all the people. The fact is that the hunger is there, -and we have not begun to satisfy it. The point that is of special in- terest to us this morning is that theysspeak of the educated man. And I submit, for television and movies and billboards and picture magazines, that's status! What I would like to encourage, as you may suspect, is the thoughtful consideration of the superior program be it Class A time, or B, or C, as being also the superior vehicle for the salesman. We may be able, if it becomes universal, we may be able to lift the intelligence level of the whole American people in a single gen- eration. We aim at nothing less.I tom. 1. - " r, f f , , ': : c .: - ;. a r .y E'Y F Y ,