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Charlie and Marg Messer plays for his Buchta dancers The Corn Is Green - Like Money BY BILL DRYLIE F and when I become czar of television == somebody will have to justify Don Messer's! show even if we have to search the garret." That appeared in The Toronto Star on January 13 of this year. I wrote it. A week before, on the subject. of TV: awards and what a howl they were in Canada, this: _appeared:" ,,, even Messer has been nominated -- although the only thing he has done 'all season is to play a fiddle and grimace over a tight belt." Me Again! As czar of TV. I would have given Messer his train and boat fair back to Prince Edward Island 'way back there in January. I'd have let his two stars, Marg Osborne and Charlie Chamberlain find their own way back. All of which proves that I'm not cut out to be a czar of television because these three are the hottest properties on Canadian TV today. I still don't think they should be, but 'they are. Recently Massey-Ferguson signed them up for another season of bucolic foot- stomping and ear-splitting for the simple reason that Messer and his summer replacements are solidly established as the nation's number one entertainers, Apart from proving that corn is still mar. ketable, the success of this Maritime show has proved that TV sponsors aren't the all time biggest marks in the business. Up until now sponsors on CBC TV have always main- tained they didn't get the audience to justify the full television production costs of any, show. So the taxpayer, through the CBC, has 'been subsidizing every sponsor from soap mak¢ ers to car manufacturers, But Don Messer's Jubilee has drawn up to 2,500,000 viewers -- a pretty fair slice of the population -- and yet: the sponsor still doesn't pay the full price. Messer-Ferguson, sorry, Massey-Ferguson, still pays "almost all" 'the production costs but leaves a little for the CBC to pick up, Yet recently when Messer 'and his troupe appeared in Ottawa, the sponsor sold tractors and other farm imple- ments worth $170,000, It may be that under the new contract the firm has been forced to pay the full tab, ,The CBC may have pointed out that two and a half million viewers, most of them tractor- buyers, means the sponsor can afford to pay the going rate, The show itself, sometimes called Don's, Messy Jubilee, is as plain and folksy as bacon 'and eggs -- even more countrified than that, I guess, and we should put fried potatoes in with those eggs. There's nothing new in it that wasn't new thirty years ago when Messer and his islanders were very large on Canadian radio and some .of the folk songs go back perhaps over a hundred years. Its vocalists --. a belchy Charlie Chamberlain, unhandsome, unsophisticated with a voice for bath tub croon- ing only; a matronly Marg Osborne whose hairdresser and dressmaker must be mad at the world, with pipes that were once thought EE i SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER, 17 Quiet mv Don Meer fittin' only for singing at very small weddings. Charlie Chamberlain is an off-tune Cliff McKay, Marg? Well there's no modern counter- part for her -- she's the first of her kind in big-time entertainment with nothing going for her but the mother image. iid All this of course could mean a rash of nasty letters. One morning on Toronto radio station CHUM I blasted away at this show from my city slicker viewpoint and there was immediate reaction, all bad as far as I was concerned. You can criticize the royal family, President Eisenhower, call Prime Minister Diefenbaker "Charlie Chicken" and hear noth- ing from the listeners. But the moment you attack Don Messer or any of his singing hay- burners, the panic is on. Dancing enthusiasts will get after you if you're unkind to Gunta Buchta, the Hungarian dance master, Every week his square dancers come on-stage, perform the dance they'd done the week before to music you heard the week before, Yet they're part of the Don Messer success, objects of ridicule at the CBC's big studio headquarters in Toronto, but idols to hundreds of thousands across the country even though their performances are third grade to any critical eye. Messer himself is perhaps the quietest 'man in showbusiness. He's plugged along for years on CBC radio and personal appearances in the Maritimes (always, however, charging a hefty fee) and now he's called a hot pro- perty, a country-style Lawrence Welk, When he and his troupe went on tour recently thousands turned out to see him, fought for tickets, barged in for autographs, astounded showbusiness successes, like Jack Kane whose CBC ratings dropped to 26th while Messer climbed from the bottom to the number one spot. It's easy to see now that Messer isn't a flash in the pan. He'll go on in television, gobbling up the opposition without even try- ing -- he hasn't shown any signs of trying yet and look where he is,