Television digest with electronic reports (Jan-Dec 1959)

2 began beating retreat from its "final action" of last Dec. 30 on long-troublesome booster question (Vol. 15:1). There is now a very strong chance that FCC will find a formula to legalize boosters. It's likely that Commission will; (1) Ask Congress to amend Sec. 319(a) of Communications Act to "excuse" booster operators for building without permission. (2) Relax its engineering standards to permit construction of boosters cheaper than uhf translators. (3) Relax operating-personnel requirements to permit simplest kind of engineering supervision over booster installations. After 4 years of rule-making wrestling with problem — and coming to a 6-1 decision that the "public interest" can't be served by unlicensed uhf stations — FCC needed only a touch of political pressure to reconsider. No Congressional hearings on the subject were held or even scheduled. No new technical evidence was produced to disprove case against unauthorized repeaters. But Commission nevertheless voted — unanimously this time — to give operators 6 months instead of 90 days to apply for uhf translators or shut down. Commission said it now finds it needs to "give further study to the legal & technical aspects of the problem." VIDEO TAPE SYNDICATION IS HERE-NOW: All TV film producers and syndicators are pre-' paring right now to begin gradual changeover to tape — no matter how loudly they publicly deprecate the medium of electronically-recorded TV programming. Even as the "can' t-be-done" chorus rings loud and clear, the inevitability of tape as a substitute for film programs produced for TV is foreshadowed by the fact that magnetic video pickup heads already are scanning syndicated non-film subjects in dozens of TV stations across the country. Today's infant tape syndication industry is living on distribution of programs which started as local shows — in short, recorded in the TV station. But CBS Films' announcement this week of a new original tape series by Robert Herridge (see p. 6) was opening gun in the produced-especially-f or-tape race. Also poised for original tape shows are NTA, Guild and other as-yet-to-be-announced producers — in fact, virtually all of the TV film majors probably will be in some tape activity in '59. Biggest syndicator of tapes today is Guild Films, which now has co-production syndication deals to handle local shows originated by 3 stations. It has 3 taped series in syndication — each one bought by approximately 25 stations. They are 60-min. "Divorce Court" (originating at KTTV, Los Angeles), 30-min. "Bedlam from Boston" wrestling (from WBZ-TV, Boston) & "People's Court" (from KCOP, Los Angeles). How about "ole demon incompatibility" — the legendary gremlin which is supposed to degrade playback quality of tape recorded on a different machine? We've never heard of one instance of it," says Guild sales v.p. Irving Feld. He adds that stations are treating tapes with loving respect; there's been no damage to date. Guild makes 2 prints of each tape, bicycles them among subscribing stations. It's looking for more local station programs which might make good national tape shows, and has several originals on books for syndication in next 6 months. Approximately 80 stations now have TV tape facilities (see list, Vol. 15:4), and this is the current market for syndicated tape product. ^ ❖ ❖ There's plenty of bush-league tape syndication going on — mostly among stations under common ownership. Some of the Storer stations are interchanging taped programs. Bullitt stations KING-TV, Seattle, & KGW-TV, Portland, are swapping programs and special events. WFLA-TV, Tampa, & WEAR-TV, Pensacola, Fla. are exchanging. Metropolitan's WNEW-TV, New York, will begin sending tapes to its WTTG, Washington, when latter gets its recorder on Feb. 11. In the immediate offing are bigger projects; Brooklyn Union Gas Co., sponsor of "Dione Lucas' Gourmet Club" on New York's WPIX, is hoping to interest other gas utilities in sponsoring tapes of the show on their own local stations. Paramount Pictures' KTLA, Los Angeles, has set up syndication div., and will offer 6 taped shows. Los Angeles' KTTV is understood to be ready to syndicate "Peter Potter's Juke Box Jury," a one-time network show. ABC may syndicate its "Stars of Jazz."