Television digest with electronic reports (Jan-Dec 1952)

3 (1) Producers, through Motion Picture Assn, of America, whose president Eric P. Johnston will testify. (2) Theatre owners, through National Exhibitors Theatre-TV Committee (Vol. 6:26), headed by East Coast theatre chain owner S. H. Fabian. Only party to file opposition so far has been AT&T — expected to be formidable opponent. Telecasters have been watching developments closely, but openly have expressed little interest. NARTB-TV board, however, has authorized appearance at hearings if it's found necessary. TV director Thad Brown says he's studying question, will enter hearings if there's any indication theatre people want to infringe frequencies which telecasters need. * * # * What's wrong with present system of theatre TV? Why are exclusive channels needed? To begin with, say theatre-TV backers, present method isn't a "system" at all. Some 60 theatres are equipped with projection receivers built to pick up the standard 525-line home-TV type broadcasts. Theatre "telecasts" so far have been sent to theatres in score of cities when and where AT&T circuits were available. Theatre people hasten to point out that a "real" theatre-TV system can't be established on this basis. These are their principal arguments: (1) Standards. While today's home-TV images are satisfactory on the screen of a receiver in the living room, they're woefully inadequate on a 15x20-ft. screen in a darkened theatre — especially when on same program with motion pictures. More definition is necessity, they say. While there's much controversy on subject, general consensus is that video bandwidth of 10 me can reproduce picture that "looks" about as good as 55mm movie. TV stations put out 4-mc video signal, and AT&T's cable passes only 2.7 me, though microwave is much better. Then there's color. Theatre-TV exponents agree system should use color from start. Both color-subcarrier (RCA theatre color, Vol. 7:42) and field-sequential systems (Eidophor-CBS, Vol. 7:40) have advocates among theatre-TV experts. But they say different color systems can co-exist under proposed theatre-TV setup — and feel color question should be kept out of FCC hearings, since proposed allocation would be for point-to-point "closed system" transmission only. (2) Distribution. Theatre-TV can't succeed if it must rely on common carriers, its exponents say. AT&T ' s present TV service won't accommodate wide-band, high-definition system, and they argue that AT&T's other commitments make construction of new facilities too uncertain and indefinite. Acquisition of transmission facilities, movie folk insist, "should be entrusted to those who have the primary interest of exhibiting the TV picture in the theatre, rather than to a common carrier whose principal obligation is to provide telephone service to millions of private subscribers" [from 20th Century-Fox brief, filed with FCC September 1949; see Vol. 5:36]. High cost of common carrier service is another argument against use of AT&T lines. Theatre people are quick to point out that oil and gas companies have built their own elaborate transcontinental microwave systems because of "AT&T's slowness and costs." Too, they say AT&T isn't flexible enough for remote pickups, etc. Theatre-TV people are asking FCC to allocate enough frequencies to them to accommodate 6 competitive nationwide networks, including inter-city relays, intracity transmissions and remote pickups. They figure 360-mc chunk of microwave frequencies can do the trick. Then they want to split this into 6 "double channels" — each 60-mc wide and containing two 30-mc channels, of which 10-mc would be for video signal. The 30-mc width is necessary, they say, because available microwave equipment uses frequency-modulated picture, requiring wide sidebands. And they argue wide channel would accommodate any future improvements, such as better color, 3-dimensional picture, etc. Signal would be carried city-to-city via relay hops, each network alternating between its two 30-mc channels with each hop, to avoid interference. Within cities, signal would be beamed directionally from high point to theatres. There 'd be no co-channel or adjacent-channel interference problems in such