Television digest with electronic reports (Jan-Dec 1959)

7 Youth Court, Guy Mitchell Shoio, Municipal Court, Emergency Ward. ■ There’s still a big barrier to inteniational syndication of tapes — aside from the fact that few foreign stations have tape equipment. The problem of transmission standards, unimpoi'tant in film sales, is a major vexation in countries which don’t use U.S. standards. Countries with U.S. standards which now have TV tape recorders are: Japan (22 recorders), Canada (7), Mexico (4) and Cuba (1). In Manchester, England, engineers of commercial programmer Granada TV are developing an electronic standards converter, as an accessory to their Ampex I’ecorder — so that U.S. 525-line tapes will produce a British-standard 405-line picture. This will have important implications for Eurovision and all international TV activities, since it will be usable with live TV, too. Eurovision currently uses “optical conversion” — aiming a camera at the face of a monitor. The FCC Protest Base Broadened: The U.S. Supreme Court certainly didn’t ease FCC’s burden this week, when it upheld the Court of Appeals’ ruling that the Commission must give Philco a hearing on its protest against renewal of RCA-NBC’s WRCV-TV & WRCV, Philadelphia (Vol. 14 :52) . The net effect of this decision, in addition to guaranteeing Philco a hearing, is to insure that a new large class of non-broadcast interests will have a chance to air complaints against stations in Commission hearings. FCC had fought the Philco protest vigorously, asserting that its claims of injury by RCA-NBC stations wei'e “vague & insubstantial . . . remote & speculative.” Hitherto, non-broadcast interests such as Philco, got short shrift from FCC. Lawyers aren’t agreed on how wide the door has been opened to protests. One veteran practitioner comments : “Any good lawyer can get a hearing for almost any party with a gripe against a station. He’s limited only by the fertility of his imagination.” But an experienced FCC attorney claims: “It broadens it a bit — not necessarily real wide. It really depends on the facts in each case.” More test cases will provide the answer. Philco had sought the hearing in an effort to prove RCA-NBC is a “monopoly” not qualified to be a station owner. To get a hearing, the law requires Philco first to prove that it has “standing” — i.e., is injured by the practices complained of. As a competitor to RCA, Philco charged that RCA used NBC’s stations in such fashion as to give RCA products a promotional edge — e.g., identifying NBC on the air as “a service of RCA.” Both FCC & NBC called Philco’s grounds farfetched, and the Commission was particularly apprehensive lest it be overwhelmed with protest hearings. Curiously, the Dept, of Justice didn’t agree — so Justice & FCC filed opposing opinions in briefs before the Supreme Court, a rare procedure (Vol. 14:52). ■ Comments on new space proposal by FCC (Vol. 15:2) may be filed until Jan. 26. The Commission has extended the deadline at the request of the American Rocket Society, Dr. Schwartz vs. FCC : A new book on the House legislative oversight subcommittee by ex-chief counsel Dr. Bernard Schwartz (Vol. 15:1) promises the “full, shocking inside story of corruption & influence-peddling in the federal regulatory agencies” — with FCC getting the fullest treatment. Jacket blurb for The Professor & the Commissiovs, scheduled for publication Feb. 17 at .$4 by Alfred A. Knopf, says the book tells “what important areas the Harris Committee has bai’ely touched upon.” Among those mentioned: TV cases in Fresno, Madison, Albany-Schenectady, Mobile, Chicago, Indianapolis, Denver, Tampa, Hartford, Petersburg, Va. It’s likely, however, that the book will reveal less about untouched FCC scandals than about Dr. Schwartz. He’s the NYU law professor who came to Washington as an expert on administrative law and was fired by subcommittee last Feb. (Vol. 14:7) after earning a I'eputation as the most unorthodox Congressional investigator since the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. Stations Court Scans Dropout Expenses: When an applicant drops out of a competitive hearing and has his hearing expenses paid by the remaining applicants, the parties involved must satisfy FCC that the expenses are truly out-of-pocket — and nothing more. That’s the nubbin of a Court of Appeals decision this week, sending back to the FCC the much-litigated Beaumont Ch. 6 case. Winner Beaumont Bestg. operates KFDM-TV on the channel now. There were originally 3 applicants — Beaumont Bestg., KTRM & Enterprise Co. KTRM stockholder W. P. Hobby, head of Houston Post (KPRC-TV), lent $55,000 to Beaumont Bestg. to give to KTRM to drop out. In turn. Hobby got an option to acquire 32%% of a new corporation in which Beaumont Bestg. would hold 67%%. Enterprise appealed on the grounds that the agreement changed the original Beaumont Bestg. application. The court agreed, but FCC issued another final decision, again in favor of Beaumont Bestg. Enterprise appealed again, and Included the “expense” question. This week’s court decision sends the case back to FCC, for the latter to determine that the $55,000 was for legitimate expenses. Decision came from Judges Bazelon, Fahy & Danaher. It was written by Bazelon. They had no quarrel with rest of FCC’s decision. In another decision. Court of Appeals turned down the argument by Gerico Investment Co., holder of CP for WITV, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (Ch. 17), that FCC should have given it Ch. 6 when the channel was dropped into the Miami area. WITV now competing for Ch. 6 with 3 other applicants. Judges Miller, Fahy & Danaher had this to say of WITV’s argument: “To sustain this contention, we would be required to hold, as we cannot do, that the Commission has been arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable in opening the question of allocating Channel 6 to other applicants as well as to Gerico. The disposition of this Channel is now before the Commission to be determined in a consolidated proceeding in which we must at present assume that the rights of the lespective applicants, including Gerico, will be respected by the Commission, subject to judicial review.” Quick Indianapolis Hearing: The essence of an entire competitive TV hearing was crammed into about an hour of oral argument this week as FCC heard WlBC & Crosley argue over Indianapolis’ Ch. 13. Crosley had won the original decision and now operates WLWI, but the Court of Appeals sent the case back to the FCC for a fresli look, ruling that Comr. Craven shouldn’t have voted in the case because he hadn’t heard