Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1960)

22 JANUARY 4, 1960 Suggestions for 1960 demands on GE & Westinghouse are being solicited by 5 AFL-CIO unions in a novel joint ballot to their reported 150,000 GE & 70,000 Westinghouse members. The unions assert the common ballot does not constitute unified bargaining, say that each will bargain separately. The ballot, with a Jan. 11 return deadline, asks unionists to mark their order of preference for 19 listed demands, ranging from a wage increase & guaranteed annual wage to shorter hours & more vacations. The 5 unions: lUE, IBEW, lAM, UAW, AFTE. Automatic check-out computer for supermarkets, which will reduce by two-thirds the time now required manually to total customers’ purchases, will be introduced early this year by General Telephone & Electronics. B. K. Wickstrum, marketing senior vp for GT&E subsidiary Sylvania Electric Products, reports that discussions have been held with a number of supermarket chains on the “Score” equipment, that a prototype model will be built this year, that “Score” probably will have a $25,000 price tag when placed on the market. The check-out machine is designed to “read” price data on groceries as they travel a conveyer belt, relay figures to a computer for totaling. CBS’s Columbia ad account is moving out of McCannErickson, N.Y., which earlier this season lost the CBS-TV network account. The phono-record div. billings, reportedly in excess of $2 million annually, will be shifted tc Benton & Bowles, which had the account prior to its acquisition by M-E in 1946. No official reason was given for the move, although unofficial reaction in N.Y. was that it was triggered by the acquisition of Magnavox ad billings a year ago by M-E subsidiary Marschalk & Pratt. New-type hi-fi record, reportedly one-eighth the weight & thickness of conventional discs, will be introduced in the U.S. by a British-French-American combine. The records will be produced by Rank Audio Plastics, owned by motion-picture power J. Arthur Rank & giant publisher Librairie Hachette. Exclusive U.S. manufacturer of the records is N.Y.-based Consolidated Litho Corp. TV ticker-tape service is now being offered by TransLux Electronics Corp., the same firm which operates conventional ticker-tape projection system in brokerage houses. Available on rental basis, closed-circuit system will show as many as 3 tapes at a time on a single monitor. Westinghouse engineer Dr. Edgar A. Sack Jr. has been named “Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer” for 1959 by Eta Kappa Nu Assn. Mgr. of the dielectric devices section of Westinghouse Research Labs, Dr. Sack has been working on special applications of electroluminescence. One of best hi-fi books we’ve read is Norman Crowhurst’s new Hi Fi Made Easy (Gernsback Library, 224 pp., paperback $2.90, hard cover $5), written without circuit diagrams or engineeringese and covering technical material in an easy-to-understand & non-technical way. ORDER YOUR 1959 BOUND VOLUME We will bind & index all 1959 copies of Television Digest, Vol. 15, including the semi-annual Factbook with all addenda, supplements and special reports. This embossed hard-cover volume — the authoritative record of the television industry in 1959 — is available at $25.00. Orders will be accepted through January 8, 1960. Finance RCA NEVER SOLD MORE: Reflecting the rising tide of electronics business, RCA in 1959 will rack up record sales and a 29% profit increase over 1958, Chmn. David Sarnoff reported in his annual year-end statement last week. Sales will peak at $1,375 billion, 17% ahead of last year’s $1,176 billion and well ahead of the previous high of $1,176,277,000, set in 1955. Profits, he calculated, will reach $40 million, equal to $2.65 a common share, compared with 1958’s net of $30.9 million ($2.01). The healthy profits, however, still lag far behind 1955’s record earnings of $47,525,000 ($3.16). Gen. Samoff attributed the strong sales & profits showing to “increases in virtually all of the company’s major operating units;” predicted a continuing increase in RCA sales & profits in the “dynamic decade” ahead, a doubling of RCA volume by 1965. He foresees electronics manufacturing as “the nation’s fastest growing industry,” expects that total electronic sales in 1960 will rise to $16 billion (including distribution revenues) from $14 billion this year, soar to $25 billion in 1965. (EIA predicts factory sales of electronics at $10.35 billion in 1960, Vol. 15:51 pl3.) RCA color TV was in the black for the first time in 1959, Gen. Sarnoff reported. Although he disclosed no profit figures, he said that 1959 sales of color sets would close out at about 30% ahead of 1958. “As sales volume continues to increase, so will the profits,” he said. Sales of b&w TV sets also were well ahead of the 1958 volume. Gen. Sarnoff said that RCA more than doubled its sales of portable TV sets in a year when nearly 40% of all TV sets sold by the industry were portable types. He noted that radio “enjoyed a buoyant resurgence of popularity.” With possible thought to his famous 1915 proposal outlining the “radio music box,” Gen. Sarnoff reported that RCA in 1959 sold more radios than in any other year of its history. Pace-setter was the transistor-Portable. Looking ahead to the next decade, Gen. Samoff forecast 10 major developments. Among them: global TV in full color, home electronic heat & cool systems, electronic sight & sound systems built in as standard equipment in new homes & apartments, ETV classes of 100,000 & more students taught by one gifted instructor. ♦ • • Motorola anticipates that 1960’s rising markets will produce sales topping $300 million, up from the more than $275 million foreseen for 1959. Pres. Robert W. Galvin says that earnings prospects are “equally favorable and the company should improve over the record 1959 year.” Despite labor troubles in the steel & transport industries, he said, “all indications point to a continuation of prosperity for the economy in general, and the electronics industry particularly. Motorola expects to continue a sound growth pattern in consumer, industrial and military electronics with an overall increase of about 10% in 1960 . . . Motorola markedly increased its share of the TV business last year and continues to lead in sales of stereo hi-fi instruments.” Westinghouse employes invested $6,668,000 in the corp.’s common stock during a stock-purchase period — the 16th since 1948 — just ended. Finance vp George G. Main reports that 21,115 employes bought a total of 74,089 shares through payroll-deductions.