The temperature went down to 33 degrees at Dartmouth Saturday, but it still couldn't account for the snow that appeared on television screens in this area. In locations just north or south of Cambridge; the Crimson's first performance on television since 1951--and the first show ever from Hanover--came over very well. The video waves from Providence, R.I. and Manchester, N.H. scrupulously avoided Harvard Square, however, so that most of the sets here produced only an electronic blizzard and a fatherly voice that at one point intoned: "I hope the boys play a good clean game and don't get hurt."

But up in Hanover--a locality which, incidentally, couldn't get the game on television either--CBS had been preparing for the broadcast as if the whole world would be listening. More than 20 technicians invaded the village weeks in advance and proceeded to wire up everything in sight. Since the town has no cable connection with Concord, site of the nearest CBS station, two steel towers were built to transmit the voice and picture across the New England countryside on a special microwave circuit. On the day of the game, there were so many CBS men in the press box that reporters and broadcasters found themselves with something like half a seat apiece. Though CBS denies that the total cost of televising the game reached $50,000, the figure could not have been much less.

All to Waste

And in a certain sense the money all went to waste. For Saturday's telecast was important mainly as a part of the NCAA's new regional "game of the week" plan, and the true test of this plan came not this past weekend, in Hanover's Memorial Field, but this past summer in New York's Madison Avenue. It was then that CBS, having bought from the NCAA the right to televise five games this fall on a regional basis, tried to sell this telecast "package" to a sponsor. At the desired prices, however, no one was buying. Sponsors were first of all reluctant to compete with the NCAA's already-established national "game of the week," which the NBC network has bought for this year. More important, however, were the commercial disadvantages of any "package" covering only five Saturday afternoons during the fall, and non-consecutive afternoons at that. Advertising men place a high value on what they call "unbroken impact"; if they are going to pay thousands of dollars to foist their razor blades on eastern football fans, they want those razor blades in plain view every Saturday of the fall.

Can't Sell "Package"

After trying unsuccessfully to sell the "package," CBS in September offered the five telecasts to its affiliated stations. If these stations could manage to get their own sponsors, CBS would receive part of the fee; if not, both the station and the network would lose whatever it cost them to produce the program. In many cases both parties took the loss. In Boston, however, CBS-affiliated WNAC-TV, after waiting through the network's prolonged search for a regional sponsor, looked for one of its own, ran up against the same commercial objections as had thwarted CBS, and finally decided that the "package" wasn't worth all the expensive wrappings.

At any rate, the regional football plan has been anything but a financial success for CBS this year. It looks extremely unlikely that the network, will again sponsor such a telecast as originated from Hanover last Saturday.