Show Business: Classy Mass

• Share

Wanted: TV producer to turn out 30 NBC spectaculars for Ford Motor Co. Budget: $12 million. Salary: $250,000.

For months the unofficial want ad buzzed along the network grapevine. Gossip said the job was going begging, and many a hopeful hotshot managed to get his name noised about as a candidate. But the yearners never had much of a chance. Last week one of the plushiest producing jobs in the television business went to CBS Vice President Hubbell Robinson Jr., 53, the man who had dreamed up the Ford series in the first place.

The new job more than eased the pain of losing out in a power squeeze at CBS-TV (Robinson was passed over for the network presidency, then for its No. 2 spot, executive vice president). Said Robinson: "I will also be directly concerned with the job of creation, a thing I was getting away from at CBS." A short, suave, Brown-educated ('27) emigre from Madison Avenue, "Hub" Robinson has long believed in the motto "Mass with Class." and at CBS he went far toward making it work. He was responsible for Playhouse 90, the Phil Silvers Show, Twentieth Century. He prompted Edward R. Murrow to turn radio's Hear It Now into the television classic See It Now.

Always a booster of network-created programs, Robinson might be expected to feel uneasy about his defection to the growing ranks of packagers—except that his package will be so big as to constitute something of a network itself. As boss of Hubbell Robinson, Jr. Associates. Inc. he intends to try everything possible—musicals, 90-minute dramas, special events, tape and film shows from all over the world. Since he will own all the shows himself and will continue to profit from their residual income long after he pockets his hefty salary checks, Hub Robinson has latched onto a classy mass indeed.