Television: The Silly Air

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As summer laid a hot and humid hand upon the land, the masters of the air waves took desperate measures to hold the public's wavering attention. Items:

¶ North Carolina was gripped by a talkathon mania, and the leading contestants were all women. Fayetteville's radio station WFLB set the format: the contestants started talking before an audience outside the plate-glass window of a TV appliance store, kept on until exhaustion, sleep or urgencies of nature ended the ordeal. Other North Carolina stations matched WFLB's stunt, upped the prize value progressively to $3,000. Sue Huron, a Pittsburgh secretary of 22, kept Fayetteville station WFAI busy crackling out regular reports on her monologue of 92 hrs. 1 min. 4 sec. Then Kansas got into the act, when 29-year-old Mrs. Carmen Araiza talked of enchiladas and children for 93 hrs. 36 min. 9 sec. over Topeka's WREN. Ready to challenge the new champion was Mrs. Edith Fisher, 29, a clerk in a mailorder house in Rocky Mount, N.C., who had been briefly champion with 91 hours, and was raring to try again. Allowed Edith: "I feel as fine as a frog hair split four ways—and you don't get no finer than that. Lord willing, and the creek don't rise, I'm going to win this contest."

¶ After five short-lived assaults on the 47-day endurance record for single-engine aircraft (set by Woody Jongeward and Bob Woodhouse in 1949), two madcaps employed by Dallas' hyperthyroid station KLIF gave up for the time being. Their best effort: 12 hours. Actually, there was little reason for them to keep flying; they had already stirred up a mighty propwash of publicity for Promoter Gordon Mc-Lendon's five-station chain.

¶ To help promote an improbable trend back to "good music," station WJQS in Jackson, Miss, put some 5,000 rock 'n' roll records in a coffin, hauled the gone stuff to a local shopping center for a symbolic funeral service. Unfortunately, the disks were not buried but passed out gratis to a horde of screaming teenagers.

¶ Deejay Rege Cordic of Pittsburgh's pioneer station KDKA hit upon the "ancient" sport of brick throwing. The contest was moved to a wharf jutting into the Allegheny River after the first contestant threw his brick 67 ft. 2 in., "smack into a tentful of boy scouts." In all, some 75 athletes heaved their bricks into the water. Record toss: 80 ft., give or take a yard or two. What was it all about? None of the brick heavers were quite sure. But Disk Jockey Cordic has a new hobby magazine coming out in the fall, to be called Thud.