Radio: Ill Wind

Last month Drew Pearson lost both his sponsor (Carter’s Little Liver Pills) and his ABC network show. Darkly implying that he was the victim of a conservative conspiracy to drive liberal commentators off the air, Pearson said: “I even offered to work for free until we got a new sponsor, but ABC wouldn’t take it.”

By this week, the alleged conspiracy was proving strangely ineffectual. Pearson and his staff had decided to put his show on tape, sell it directly to individual stations across the nation at prices ranging from $7 to $100 per program. He was soon signed up by 151 stations, most of them affiliates of his old network. By week’s end the list had grown to more than 170 stations, with about 95% carrying the show under local sponsorship. Delighted with the good results of his particular ill wind, Pearson says he has no intention of returning to network broadcasting: “The way it is, I have about 170 sponsors. If I do something to lose one—or a dozen —it doesn’t matter. It’s not like being tied to one sponsor.”