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actually requiring one week. By doing it this way, we are able (or
will be) to produce the programs for about $1,000 per program. I
explained in the previous letter that nearly all the worldly
entertainment programs have a production cost averaging $35,000 per
program. So we are trying to do it for one-thirty-fifth their
cost. Ultimately we hope to have these programs running on about
100 TV stations, so that the actual cost of production finally is
lowered down to only $10 per station per program. Further, we are
planning so that we can buy the station time for one-third or one-
fourth the cost paid by the big commercial sponsors---the tobacco,
liquor and cosmetics industries, etc.
I have been so anxious to get our TV program going at
comparative LOW COST. I have done my best. I guess no man can do
more. But I did---and I still do---feel really terrible over
having been unable to go thru with those first programs ON
SCHEDULE.
And so now, dear Co-Workers, I have to come to the part of
this letter I'm ashamed to have to write you---but I must. This
struggle I had, getting myself broken into speaking naturally
before TV cameras and lights as I do before audiences or radio
microphones, actually cost us about $8,000. This very knowledge
made it the more difficult. It was like seeing $8,000 washed down
the drain into the sewer---just thrown away. As the minutes and
hours ticked away, and I was unable to really get GOING before the
cameras, realizing it was wasting hard-earned, dearly-sacrificed
money you Co-Workers had sent, I became more and more frantic and
frustrated---but somehow something seemed to have happened to me
that I couldn't help. Even so, we produced these first two
programs for ONE-SEVENTH the usual and average cost of TV
production.
NOW, in order to get the TV programs ON THE AIR on schedule,
we have to work in another three-day shooting in either two or
three weeks from now---another $10,000 cost.
WE CAN'T delay, and wait for our next scheduled shooting
date, which was to have been July 5, 6, and 7,---because unless we
cancel the RADIO NETWORK with the July 17th broadcasts, we are
BOUND by our contract not to cancel until our fiscal year is up,
which will be late in October. We cannot go off radio on July
17th, unless we can go on TV the following Sunday---July 24th. To
go OFF the air completely would be to lose hundreds of thousands,
or MILLIONS of listeners we have spent thousands of dollars to get
interested. Once OFF the radio Network, unless we are already ON
these TV stations, our advertising agency tells us we probably
would be unable to ever get on TV at all!
So IT BOILS DOWN TO THIS: We are FORCED, now, to set up
another 3-day TV-shooting date not later than two or three weeks
from now---because we MUST have a certain number of programs
already produced ahead on film, before we dare start on the air---
and further because I have to fly to England on July 11th for three
weeks, to supervise getting our European headquarters office set up
in London, and the European edition of The PLAIN TRUTH going out.