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170
●
CHARLES ADDAMS.
The dark side of "Little Annie." Watercolor, ink, and gouache on
Whatman board. 540x437 mm; 21¼x17¼ inches. Signed in
image, lower left and inscribed, signed, and dated in upper right.
Cover art for Show:The Magazine of the Arts, April 1962. Some
slight watercolor streaking at lower left of image into margin.
[6,000/9,000]
AN EXCELLENT
,
LARGE
-
SCALE WATERCOLOR ILLUSTRATION BY
ADDAMS ABOUT THE NETWORK TELEVISION POWER PLAYS OF THE
1960
S
,
INSCRIBED TO THE
CBS
TELEVISION NETWORK PRESIDENT
AND PROGRAMMING DIRECTOR
: “
FOR JAMES AUBREY
,
THE MAN
WHO RUNS THE MACHINE
.
CHARLES ADDAMS
, 1962.”
Drawn in his sinister but humorous way, the scene depicts a test audience
seated in a dungeon, forced to watch a horror scene (of an octopus
attacking a woman) while a bare-chested and blindfolded guard bearing a
whip holds command.The “participants" are holding “like and “dislike”
buttons that are wire-fed through a floor pipe leading to four network
executives below, gleefully tracking the ratings on the quickly flowing
feed-out charts.
The feature story it depicts is “CBS: The Network and the Mind
Machine,” by Martin Mayer, which describes the intense atmosphere of the
big 3 television networks vying for top ratings.The article focuses on James
Aubrey, the young, ambitious head of CBS who, with corporate president
Frank Stanton, spearheaded the changes to come. To evaluate the
popularity of primetime shows (the real money makers), their method of
choice was a test audience called “Little Annie,” a name for their version
of the “Program Analyzer” developed at Columbia University in the
1950s. To procure subjects for a Little Annie session, a cheery hostess
would lead visitors (usually studio tour takers) to a screening room, serve
refreshments, and supply them with two control buttons to depress to reflect
their approval or disapproval of what they were viewing. Their reactions
were immediately registered on a graph chart; at the end of the viewing, a
questionnaire and a short interview (usually administered by a psychologist)
were given to each participant.The resulting data was used to generate hits
like “Have Gun, Will Travel.”The article ultimately questions whether
this increasingly dehumanizing means of statistics gathering will make the
leaders of CBS servants of the "machine" or can they remain responsible
individuals?