Television: Matinee’s Fadeout

In its 2½ years as five-day-a-week afternoon fare, NBC’s live hour-long Matinee Theater, the only daytime color TV show on any network, has launched dozens of new writers and a score of directors, given more roles to actors than MGM. Among its 29 tons of scripts, the show has adapted worthy works ranging from Jane Austen to Emile Zola. As a sheer piece of logistics, it has piled up phenomenal records: it has used 15,243 costumes, 4,203 settings, 210,103 props, and 9,035 gallons of coffee to keep the casts and crews rolling on. It seemed that Matinee Theater would roll on forever.

Last week the show put up its closing notice. Bucking giveaway shows, westerns, soap operas, and mounting production costs, Matinee Theater steadily lost viewers and sponsors, was losing money for NBC. In June, after its 665th hour-long program, the show will fade out for the last time. Likeliest replacement: a soap opera or two. Already dreaming up ten new projects for NBC, Producer Albert McCleery, 46, was ready with an epitaph: “I’ve been very lucky. I’ve been running what amounts to a national theater, the busiest one anywhere.”