“I am fully aware of the pressure from advertisers to keep the volume of their commercials up in order to blast through the many viewers who use their remote control to squelch the commercial. However, for every one viewer who squelches the volume at every commercial, there are ten or maybe fifty who do not carry the remoter around in their pocket and who are not so trigger-quick as to be able to squelch out a commercial like the Dunes that pops in with a blast that almost shatters your nerves.”
Not quite quick enough on the trigger, his nerves shattered, Hughes could not even control the brightness and contrast on his own “Swinging Shift” movies:
“3. For the last three days, approximately, the transmission has been technically deficient in a manner that has resulted in the screen being periodically darker than any normal value. So dark in fact, that, in the Bette Davis film ‘Stolen Life’ and in the RKO film ‘Half Breed’ the screen was almost black throughout its entire area for long periods of time….
“Now, also through a large part of ‘Half Breed’, the sound was way sub-standard, both in volume and also in quality.
“The dark picture was still noticeable this AM….”
What made it all the worse was the humiliation of having his machine malfunction in public:
“I suggest you tell the station manager that the ownership of the station is publicly known to rest with the Hughes Tool Company, and that the Hughes Tool Company is known to have available to it the assistance of the Hughes Aircraft Company, probably the foremost organization engaged in advanced electronics in the entire world.
“Under these circumstances, it is just unacceptable that the quality of signal broadcast by Channel 8 be as far sub-standard as it is.
“So, if it is too much of a problem for ch 8 engineering personnel, the Hughes Tool Company will send a team of technicians to Las Vegas from Culver City, and they will damn well have this station operating satisfactorily.”
But there were other problems not even the ultimate TV repairmen could solve, and Hughes grappled with them daily. Nothing escaped his attention. No detail was too small, as he had to contend now with distasteful commercials, then with “off-beat characters” delivering editorial opinion, even with “the programming slump which occurs from 6 to 6:30 AM.”
Treating KLAS as if it were his private TV set, Hughes not only demanded final say on all shows but actually spent hours poring over lists detailing each episode of each series running on the station. A flurry of memos followed:
“Please determine whether the black and white Lucy Show has been the regular scheduled program for the 12:00 o’clock to 12:30 time period.”
“Please ask Gray to ask Smith if it would not be better to use one of the remaining segments of ‘Hawaiian Eye’ instead of starting a new policy of running anything like ‘Run for Your Life’ which was in prime time only a week ago.”
“OK, by all means use ‘Hawaiian Eye.’ But please ask Smith to hold onto both segments of ‘Run for Your Life’ and ‘Man from Uncle’ as long as he can, as I want to explore the possibility of showing these before they are shipped.”
Time and again the beleaguered station manager had to await Hughes’s decision on proposed new programs, which were routinely rejected without explanation, always at the last possible minute. A memo pleading “the manager urgently requests an answer as to whether or not he can include the show ‘Playboy After Dark,’” would finally come back days later with Hughes’s scrawclass="underline"
“Absolutely NO.
“But I want it handled very carefully. I want no trouble with the Playboy people.”
Then there would be sudden outbursts from the penthouse, as when an enraged Hughes one evening discovered syndicated commentator Paul Harvey on the KLAS “Big News”:
“We have never editorialized before, and when we do, I expect every word to come to me first.
“Pull the Paul Harvey show off the air. You have 10 days to try to sell it to someone (try Channel 5 first) before pulling it, but if you can’t sell it then we will pull it anyway and pay for it. Maybe we could give someone the Merv Griffin show if they will take Paul Harvey.”
And there were equally sudden fears: “I just heard something about an 84 hour telethon,” wrote Hughes, dreading the marathon preemption. “I hope this is not planned for ch 8.”
Nothing, however, quite so upset the recluse as commercials. In what was probably his one demonstration of populist spirit, Hughes saw himself representing aggrieved TV viewers everywhere as he declared all-out war on offensive ads.
“What about eliminating the Adjusta-Bed cure-all commercials?” demanded the bed-ridden billionaire, not about to put up with any hucksters. “Also, even after eliminating the undesirable Adjusta-Bed commercials, you want the Adjusta-Bed commercials reduced to about 1/8 of the present number and spotted in occasionally between other commercials.
“When a hard-sell, constant repetition campaign of this type is used, it may well be all right for the advertiser, but it drives the audience crazy.”
His lawyers warned that he was “courting disaster by requiring the station manager to delete or ask customers to change commercials that do not violate the television code of ethics,” but Hughes, who had his own code, was relentless.
In quick order, he banned a slew of “shabby, unworthy, misleading, untrue, distorted and fraudulent” real-estate promotions, then spotted a particularly offensive “onion-slicing machine” commercial that led him to issue a general edict:
“There should be no more presentations of food in the studio or an announcer trying to talk with food in his mouth. Any commercials including food are to be taped outside of the studio and are to be presented with good taste.”
The real issue, however, was neither onion slicers nor Adjusta-Bed adjustments, but control. KLAS air time was his time, and Hughes’s greatest wrath was reserved for the hapless station manager’s onetime daring fling with charity.
It started innocently enough. A series of public-service spots promoting the sale of American flags, with the proceeds going to aid needy children. But the unapproved thirty-second ads drove Hughes into a blind fury:
“Please get me at once the real true explanation of what caused the manager of KLAS to give gratis the spot announcements on a broadcast station he does not own.
“I want to know by just what in the hell kind of a right does an employe involve a TV station in a charitable operation of this kind, which may, or may not be on the level.
“About half these charitable gimmicks turn out to be fraudulent or politically inspired, or motivated by some forces which are not disclosed.
“Also about half of them turn out to involve people who are left wingers or at least people with whom I dont want my name associated.
“I dont like this, and I want to know what induced the station manager to do this thing, and, if he wont give you a satisfactory answer, I want to have somebody investigate his activities and background.”
Told that the suspicious charity was organized by the juvenile judge of the district court and staffed by a who’s who of worthy local ladies, Hughes reluctantly allowed a sharply diminished number of flag ads to run for a short time. But when the commercials continued beyond the cutoff date, Hughes’s anger exploded.
“TV time is no different from money,” he fumed. “The principle business of the station consists of exchanging time for money.
“As I view it, the unauthorized giving of TV time (whether to a charitable entity or otherwise) is absolutely the same as reaching in the cash register and taking out a sum of money.