Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 230

Tho potential audience for VGPR advertisers is considerable. Metro Detroit has 883,972 black consumers Regular $2 1 ONLY Li 7A SPECIAL. PURCHASE LEATHER UPPER CREPE BOTTOM WEOOE CONNIE "RASCAL" carpet in and I want to spend my money with a brother. Are there any in the Sure, there's four or five quality installers in the city but nobody knows it." Still, not all advertisers are sure that WGPR is worth their hard-earned money. "People don't know the station and say 'come back when you get more Snyder said.

Just how many viewers WGPR actually has is debatable. Connie Anthes of Arbitron, an audience rating service (who admits the rating system still has its bugs), says Arbitron's standard survey figures do not indicate ethnic group viewing habits. They measure the viewing pattern of tri-county Detroit, but not of black Detroit. The "Big City News" rating of two percent last March indicates the percentage of people in the tri-county area who watched the newscast, but not the percent of black viewers in Detroit. Were the survey area limited to Detroit, Anthes said, WGPR's rating would be higher.

How much higher? Snyder claims five times. But nobody really knows. Still, even with the. present rating system, the WGPR audience is larger than expected. Several shows are getting two percent of the viewing audience in their time slot, a figure not reached by many new stations for a year or more.

"The Scene," with its average of 80,000 daily viewers and four percent rating, represents the high watermark of the WGPR program schedule. "Any independent television station (like WGPR) has a tough time," says Bet-telou Peterson, Free Press television critic. "No station makes money in the beginning." But Panagos is convinced WGPR will survive its rocky infancy, and with a measure of success. Panagos' optimism is backed by Banks' word that the Masons' support of the station continue indefinitely, although Banks has assured the Masons WGPR will be turning a profit soon, hopefully this fall. The near future holds both trouble and promise.

Maryann Formaz, the head of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) local, is aware that WGPR exists. While she has no immediate plans to unionize the station, she says she would like to "sit down with the people to talk." AFTRA might have a chance. Banks admits his staffers make only 75 percent of the salaries paid at other stations and Lassiter and Pearson claim he is very tight-fisted when it comes to paying overtime. "AFTRA would drive us out of business," said Banks. "They'd have nine men doing what I have two doing." On the brighter side, recent ad revenue is up, according to Banks.

And there's a possibility that "The Scene," which is being revamped with new sets, may be syndicated nationally. "There's a definite need for a black product," said Panagos, who would not name the syndicating company. "Especially when the program is shown on 100 TV stations, syndication is a very lucrative business." There are other cities with large black populations and wealthy black movers and shakers who will one day do as Banks did. Banks himself expects to see it happen, perhaps next in Atlanta. He hopes, if WGPR is successful, to help launch those future stations.

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