Basic HTML Version
-17-
It is refreshing to have a serious journalist, television journalist
like Michael Jackson,spend the entire 30 minutes just asking one way
or another for all practical purposes, what do we believe. And how
are we going about getting our message to the world. It was only at
the very tail end that he asked anythin� at all about other things
like our concert series and our auditorium.
This morning I took time to speak with Mr. Armstrong at some length
because tomorrow morning I'll be leaving for New York for about four
or five days to make plans concerning QUEST, and wanted to get his in
sight as well as some advice and instruction. We're at that point
now where we have seven more months remaining to us--less than seven
now because we're in the middle of November--seven more months to the
end of the fiscal year at which time our commitment to stay with QUEST
would, ·1et us say, come to an end, although Mr. Armstrong has said we
may not end it at that time if the financial considerations beyond
July 1 are things which we feel are within our ability to handle,
and if everything about QUEST proves to be more and more consistent
with the getting out of the Gospel. I'll be trying to review the
history, let's say, or experience of the past five and a half months
to see how the financial considerations are comparing with what promises
have been made to me and to Mr. Armstrong back in July, and then try
ing to make some good crystal ball estimates of what would lie beyond
June 1979. That is a very difficult thing to do.
But one thing we are considering is going from the present bimonthly
format to what would be tantamount to a monthly format, or at the very
least, ten issues which would make it identical with that of the PLAIN
TRUTH. This would make the magazine more acceptable to newsstand
dealers, for example. It would also make it more acceptable perhaps
to more people who want to have a magazine every month instead of every
other month. There are very few successful magazines which are set
up on a bimonthly basis.
So we'll be thinking about all of those things and then I'll be coming
back to Tucson a week from now, actually next Friday. Mr. Armstrong
will then be briefed with what I have learned and then he'll be making
some decisions. As I told him, the easiest thing for us to do would
be to dispose of the magazine and on the other hand, sometimes to work
with something that is potentially so good requires sometimes great
effort. He knows that because he knows the industry very well. As
he has reminded me, he was in the publishing business before I was
born. So he's right on top of it. I would hope that if all the people
that are going to be spending their time this week on the magazine
do their beat work in helping me, then Mr. Armstrong will be able to
make the right decisions. We still have many people interested in
buying it--L1tton Industries is very keen. I had another call yester
day from CBS. ABC is still interested. And these are all unsolicited
calls that have been coming in. If we should find that for one reason
or another it would be in our best interest after July to not have to
be further involved with the magazine, then we could step up the
efforts to dispose of it between January and June.
This brings you right up to date on that. In the meantime, I discussed
last week with Mr. Armstrong an idea that we had for a television show
and our television people are now working on a pilot which we hope will
be available to show to the ministers at the ministerial conference,
which will be sometime in January. That is to take the PLAIN TRUTH,