Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1960)

4 Educational Television More about ETV STRATOVISION STATUS: High hopes, pedagogically & technically, were expressed to FCC & staff last week when they were briefed on ETV Stratovision experiment of the Midwest Council on Airborne TV Instruction (see p. 2) . Westinghouse is handling the transmission end of Stratovision work for MCATI, and last week it took FCC Commissioners & staff members out to Baltimore’s Friendship Airport for a status report — which was, mainly, that educators are ready, but airplanes aren’t, and won’t be until about the end of January. Dr. John E. Ivey Jr., pres, of MCATI, said he hopes Westinghouse’s Air Arm div. will have planes ready shortly after Jan. 30. Originally, he said, the target was to test in 4th quarter 1960 but technical delays developed. An area 300 miles in diameter will be served by the 4-engine DC-6 plane traveling about 300 mph in a 20-mile diameter circle 23,000 ft. over Montpelier, Ind., near Ft. Wayne. Two 10-kw transmitters (Ch. 72 & 76), using Adler drivers & Varian klystrons, will feed signals into a 10-db gain antenna. Dr. Ivey said that 526,518 pupils and 16,221 teachers in 16,939 classrooms will participate in the Feb.-May tests — with a full program to start in Sept. 1961. The project will cost $7,750,000, he said, with $4.5 million donated by the Ford Foundation, the balance by industry. It’s understood that industrial contributors include not only electronics firms but such companies as U.S. Steel. These will be identified soon. To obtain the best teachers, some 300 applicants were screened, and 20 were selected & trained at Purdue U. Courses are designed for students from the elementary grades to college level. Plans call for 6-8 hours of telecasts daily — all emanating from 2 VE-lOOl-A Ampex recorders on the planes. A standby plane with duplicate tapes will be ready to take off in case of trouble, take over telecasting within 1-2 hours. Each plane will carry 3 crewmen & 3 TV engineers. The original Stratovision protagonist, Westinghouse’s Charles E. (Chili) Nobles, who pushed the program for commercial use immediately after World War II — but couldn’t persuade the FCC then — went through the technical aspects, describing components. He said that a gyrohydraulic system is designed to keep the antenna within one degree of vertical. If turbulence becomes too great — ^not frequent at that height — a standby antenna will be locked into position, and it’s expected that its lobe will be broad enough to keep signal fluctuations within tolerable levels. The 3-mc bandwidth work, by CBS, will use 441 lines, 48 frames — as did CBS’s sequential color. Incidentally, no color is planned for the project. The allocations & measurements aspects of the program ai’e being supervised by consulting engineer A. Earl Cullum. Reached in Dallas last week, he reported that the objectives are to study service & interference ranges for the airborne system and compare them with ground-based transmissions. The Bureau of Standards, under Kenneth Norton, is doing the theoretical calculations. “The quality of reception,” Cullum said, “must be better than the average home picture — or the planes may just as well remain in Baltimore. We’re aiming for quality as good as closed-circuit.” He added, as an aside: “You know, the home installation is the weakest link in TV generally. I’d like to see the industry do something about DECEMBER 26, 1960 it. It’s a shame — because the stations generally put out good pictures.” Cost of expanding the system would be enormous, of course, but the argument is that this would still be much less than a ground-based system offering the same coverage — and that TV offers enormous savings when used to supplement conventional schoolroom techniques. Enthusiasts foresee both federal & state govts, making the appropriations when confronted with experimental results. ■ Educational TV factsheet on “current developments” has been issued by the Joint Council on Educational TV, 1785 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington 6, D.C. Prepared by JCET exec. dir. David C. Stewart, the 15-page report lists operating ETV stations. It also charts plans for stations that are proposed, reports actions of the FCC in the ETV field, and summarizes educational programming advances. Stations KMBC-TV (Ch. 9) & KMBC Kansas City have been bought for $10.4 million by Metropolitan Bcstg. Corp. from Cook Paint & Varnish Co. Cook’s KMOS-TV (Ch. 6) Sedalia, Mo. will be transferred by Metropolitan to the owners of KRCG Jefferson City, Mo. for $200,000. Metropolitan has agreed to buy Cook’s radio KFRM Concordia, Kan., which it will seek to sell, but will operate if not sold. In N.Y., Metropolitan Bcstg. Co. officials told us 1960 will prove to be one of the station group’s best years. Outlook at the moment is for gross 1960 earnings of over $40 million and a net-before-taxes of $4 million. We are also told not to be surprised if Metropolitan adds a 5th vhf station to its vhf-uhf string before mid-1961. Token verdict of $4 has ended a $7,300,000 tripledamage anti-trust suit against the Kansas City Star by Craig Siegfried, ex-owner of radio KIMO Independence. A federal court jury in Kansas City set the $4 figure for losses Siegfried claimed he suffered from monopolistic practices of the Star and its since-sold WDAF-TV & WDAF (Vol. 14:51 p4). The court, however, ordered the newspaper to pay Siegfried’s court costs & counsel fees. Siegfried based his 2-year litigation on the Starts conviction on govt, anti-trust charges. He acknowledged, however, that he made a profit of several thousand dollars when he sold KIMO & 2 suburban newspapers he operated in Star territory. Sale of WHTN-TV (Ch. 13) Huntington, W.Va. for $1,925,000 by Cowles to Reeves Bcstg. & Development Corp. has been approved by FCC (Vol. 16:43 pll). Snowbound N.Y. agency timebuyers, gloomily listening to weather news in the suburbs, form a fine “captive” audience for a resort-area station pitch. Such was the theory of KOOL-TV & KOOL Phoenix, which ran a spot announcement series on radio WCBS N.Y.’s 6-10 a.m. Jack Sterling program in the wake of the Dec. 12 traffic-snarling snowfall. Comparing N.Y.’s chilly temperatures with those of sun-drenched Phoenix, and noting that New Yorkers would love nothing better than to escape their climatic plight, the announcements offered this businessangled consolation: “If you are a timebuyer and cannot get to Phoenix, you can get the full Phoenix market story by calling KOOL.” NAB’s Radio Code Board imder Chmn. Cliff Gill (KEZY Anaheim, Cal.) will meet Jan. 12-13 at Washington hq to review operations since they were restyled in June.'"