Year book of motion pictures (1951)

developments in the sports field which can open the doors to more theater television. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has declared a one year moratorium on live home television of football, with a specific recommendation that colleges experiment with theater television for this \ear. Since iheater television offers special advantages for televising sports, this will be a fine opporlunitv for those theaters eciuipped to carry on such televising. It would not be surprising to see other sports fields too begin to open up their contests for theater television alone. There will be efforts too for the first special entertainment events in theater television, though the small number of theaters in tele\ision restricts such opportunities at this time. The key to real theater television development rests primarily with the exhibitors. The beginnings of any new field are filled with confusion, doubt and pessimism, mixed with hope, belief and optimism. It is to be hoped that a sufficient number of exhibitors will enter theater television to provide the medium with a sufficient base for developing it as a major box office stimulant. TELEVISION CAN HYPO MOVIE BOX OFFICE By WILL BALTIN Secretary -Treasurer Television Broadcasters Association, Inc. HE STRONG ARM of resistance to television which jutted from the motion picture industry when the electronic miracle wiggled out of its laboratory cocoon about a decade ago has begun to yield to the ever-mounting pressure of the new industry's dogged determination to win public acceptance. Theater television has started to bud, thanks to a small but indomitable group of larsighted showmen; especially produced trailers for TV by major film companies were wafted from television stations into millions of homes during the past year, and, the wall of imperviousness and apathy toward experimentation in techniques looking toward developing a home boxoffice for theater product crumbled as the past year waned and sank into oblivion. True, the amount of cooperation and eagerness to chart new horizons for the film inclustry's inevitable role in this modern miracle of image transmission might best be described as a process of getting one's toes wet, yet there is no question now that the movie empire has felt tele\ision's colossal nudge— and moved over. .\ year ago at the kind invitation of Film Daily Yearbook, the writer espoused the cause of television and its relation to the exhibitor's role in this new art. He spotlighted three <lirections which could prove a bonanza for l)Oth the production and exhibition branches BALTIN of the film industry. These included wide use of theater TV to put the film house on parity with the home insofar as top entertainment \ia video is concerned; utilization of the home screen to exploit product playing locally and, finally, widening the scope of the local theater box-office by selling "tickets" foi viewing the current attraction on the home television set! The latter suggestion, a radical departure from existing practices, started a new trend of thinking in both the production and exhibition branches. Briefly, it would work this way: The production-distribution branches of the film industry would apply, as a unit, for a block of 10 or 12 channels in the ultra high frequency region of the spectrum, reserved by the FCC for television. This block, if granted, would be known as the "Movie Band" and would come to be accepted by the public as an adjacency to the local theater box-office. With 31 exchange areas in the country, the film producers would erect six or eight TV transmitters in each exchange area. Established film companies would have access to one transmitter in each exchange. When booking a film, instead of distributing a handful of prints, 100 or more prints would be booked by the distributor into 100 or more theaters within a radius of 45 miles of the exchange. Movie patrons in every locality where the 763