TELEVISION USA - The Master Planners


Here are the men who largely decide what you may and may not see on TV.
By JOHN BARTLOW MARTIN
Late on a Wednesday afternoon last spring Homer R. Heck, vice president in charge of broadcasting at the Chicago office of an advertising agency, Foote, Cone & Belding, left his office, took a taxi to O'Hare Airport and caught United's jet flight 832 to New York. He was on his way to supervise the production on Sunday of a television broadcast for a client, Hallmark Cards. As the plane climbed over Lake Michigan, Heck, a slender man of fifty-two with a graying crew cut, began talking about the role an advertising agency plays in television. "At one extreme is the Hallmark show,'' he said. "There we exercise a good deal of influence on the end product. Our client, Mr. Joyce Hall, takes a great personal pride in his television. He was the first to do a two-hour show on television, and it was Shakespeare. He did television's first opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors."