WMAQ Channel 5 - WMAQ-TV Editorial - "Beef About It" (1973)

Here's an editorial by Dillon Smith, from early in his run as Editorial Director of WMAQ Channel 5 regarding the curious Chicago practice of not selling fresh meat after 6pm, nor selling any on Sundays.

From time to time, Mr. Smith would deliver his editorials in locations pertinent to its content and focus - even at this early date, from a local supermarket after 6pm when fresh meat was made empty at store shelves, due to a contract between the supermarkets and the butchers' union which mandates they only work behind meat counters from 9am to 6pm Monday-Saturday - which, as he points out, provides a massive inconvenience to working men and women who have no such luxury to shop at the pertinent times when meat is sold. (He also adds that no such contract exists elsewhere in the nation.)

Dillon uses the context of current negotiations between the supermarket chains and the butchers' union over a new contract to announce a new ad campaign in five English-language newspapers (the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News, Today and Daily Defender), followed by a Spanish-language version of the ad/poll in El Manana, El Informador and La Raza, to allow viewers and readers to put pressure on both sides to negotiate with shoppers' interests in mind and allow fresh meat to be sold at all times. He also invites people to mail postcards to the station at a P.O. box to get the point across, and says the results of this poll will be presented to both sides at the negotiating table.

Opening and closing voiceover by ??

Ending title card:

WMAQ-TV Editorial
Dillon Smith, Editorial Director
Lee Schulman, NBC Vice President, General Manager

This aired on local Chicago TV in the Fall of 1973.

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