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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?