Boxoffice (Apr-Jun 1939)

PUBLISHED EVERT SATURDAY BY ASSOCIATED PUBLICATIONS Vol. 35 Number 1 May 27, 1939 Member Audit Bureau of Circulations Editorial Offices: 9 rockefeller plaza, new york city; Publication Office: 4804 e. 9th ST., KANSAS CITY, MO., Hollywood \ 6404 HOLLYWOOD blvd.; Chicago: 332 s. Michigan blvd. BEN SHLYEN Publisher MAURICE KANN Editor -in-Chief LOUIS RYDELL Advertising Manager William G. Formby, Editor; Jesse Shlyen, Managing Editor; J. Harry Toler, Modern Theatre Editor; A. J. Stocker, Eastern Representative; Ivan Spear, Western Manager. TAKE IT EASY ’ MEN A GREAT deal of commotion is being created about television, and the columns of BOXOFFICE are not exempted. Several manufacturers are out beating the drum with display advertising in newspapers, around New York anyway. NBC is on a regular daily broadcasting schedule and that's around New York, also. A couple of Main Stem theatres in the big town have installed receivers in their lobbies. Statements about the present and the future, but largely the present of the hear 'ems and see 'ems, are bouncing through in what soon ought to be a snowstorm, if the current flow is maintained. And that's all right, for this is the usual manner of whipping up excitement and whetting the public's interest in merchandise with a price tag. The film producers, in the main, have their eyes peeled and there appears to be no sleeping at switches this time. They have been led to understand by those presumably qualified to discuss television, as per this day, that much reliance and, in fact, dependence are placed on motion picture technique to adequately develop telecasts when telecasting is ready to assume whatever its place is to be in the communications-entertainment family. That's all right, too. It is well to be prepared, but it is likewise well to avoid being swept up in a wave of excitement that may break on the shore as merely a ripple. Ripple is exactly the word, moreover. Tomorrow, it may be a long and lazy roller. Next year, or maybe along about 1944, a crashing comber. There seems to be a rather general agreement among those equipped to talk the subject that television, as of the moment, is interesting and even arresting. At the rate scientific ingenuity and enterprise are functioning, the expert consensus, as your department of investigation finds it, is that anything may happen at any time. For instance, it is not remote that some gadget may assume form in the laboratory and come out of it as the link between sight-and-sound broadcasting now limited to circumscribed areas and a method which can encompass the whole of the nation. At least, this is the hope and the goal and, thus, to rule out the future would be juvenile and short-sighted. It is anticipated, but at an inaugural cost which probably will prove staggering, television on a national scale is well within the realm of possibility. Nothing of the sort, however, exists now. Such broadcasting is successful in varying degree up to approximately fifty miles. Anyone who wants to be super generous can double it for caution s sake. After that, caution ceases and hard fact begins. The hard fact is this: The development is limited mechanically to small areas. As such, it may turn out to be competition for picture houses, but it cannot take on any competitive permanency beyond novelty until programs are good in point of scope and variety and those programs cannot be created until enough receiving sets are sold to make the venture worthwhile commercially. Television nationally will run into the millions, and plenty of them. In its present stage, it calls for a series of stations about fifty miles apart to pick up the original show, do tricks to it and send it through the next fifty. Etc., etc. In densely populated areas where the sale of receivers conceivably will be high, or sufficiently high to come out, the plan probably will be feasible. It is the less densely populated areas which convert national television into a problem not within simple solving. For these various reasons, it strikes us the need for current worry over television is a remote one for this industry. To the producer, we suggest eyes and ears alert to the time when he can tie in. To the exhibitor, we suggest taking it all in easy stages and keeping the blood pressure down.