Broadcasting (Apr - Jun 1949)

Prince or Pauper SOME OF the more glamorous but less savory features of show-business as practiced in Hollywood are rubbing off on radio. The newspaper headlines shout about $440,000 salaries for Arthur Godfrey, and $420,000 for Lowell Thomas. Don McNeill knocked off $180,000, and Paul Whiteman a neat $145,000. All these figures are from the corporate notices filed by CBS and ABC with the Securities & Exchange Commission, as required by its regulations. It's just like the Hollywood superstratospheric figures, it seems. But is it? These reports do not say that Mr. Godfrey, for his cool 440 grand, paid off his staff, his orchestra, his talent, not to mention his income tax. He is the contractor for his organization, as are the Bennys, the Aliens, the Amos 'n' Andys. Commentator Thomas, for example, draws his 420 grand as "gross," which covers his staff, his wire-line charges when he's on tour, reporting, which is most of the time. Contrast these reports with the release a few weeks ago of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dept. of Labor. It bemoaned extensive unemployment among singers and actors in radio, based largely upon AFRA research. It talked about paltry average pay. It was designed to make radio appear the Shylock of show business. Now the SEC reports, at least as reflected in clipped sentences of the news report, scream the other extreme. Somewhere between the two you'll get the answer. And we confidently predict that it will show that radio, from page boy to president, pays better than any other pursuit. NAB Survival SWEETNESS and light is losing ground to dark shadows. Those who misjudge the signs all along radio's perimeter are kidding themselves. There's unhappiness and fear. Unhappiness breeds swiftly. Fear is deadly. The radio experience has been that when these elements are present a whipping boy must be found. The NAB is now, as always, the main target And with some justification. , It's the old story of whose ox is gored. Broadcasters in non-TV markets fear the dislocations that will follow in the wake of video. Those in TV want nothing in their path. And it's when the pocketbook is hit or threatened that dissension sets in. Talk of cut-backs in network evening rates to compensate for losses in AM ratings to television is the latest bombshell to explode in affiliates' ranks. It is the stock-in-trade of advertisers to beat down rates. And it is up to media to justify them. Actually, nothing yet has happened industrywide to cause a coast-to-coast wave of unrest. There has been localized levelling off. Many newer stations are finding the going tough. And some business is harder to get. But overall radio business is keeping pace. Business-wise, there's nothing in the current situation that sales ingenuity and programming resourcefulness can't correct. The newspapers and magazines have accomplished it with less to talk about. Their competitive Page 44 • May 23, 1949 problem, with the introduction of television, is ten times as vexatious as that which confronts radio. TV is a selling and demonstrating medium, and even at this early date it is getting the bulk of its income from sources heretofore untapped by radio. It's new money for radio (and that embraces TV). As for the NAB, the pendulum swings again. Several years ago, the charge was that the networks dominated the association. So, three years ago, the networks found themselves acquiescing to associate membership, with no automatic representation on the board of directors. Now the charge, from older stations, is that the NAB is "dominated" by non-network stations and by the overwhelming majority voice of the newcomers, many of whom are pleading for succor. We think a mistake was made at Chicago last month when the board failed to follow through on a functional reorganization — a project that had been in the works for months. Defections from the NAB are not without some valid reason. Steps must be taken to restore confidence and hold the membership of oldline stations, who by virtue of high income, have always carried a major portion of the load. The alternative is an inevitable move toward a new trade association. Such a move doesn't get underway overnight. It gathers momentum. Telecasters generally are dissatified with the NAB. They could be expected, for the most part, to throw their weight behind a revitalized Television Broadcasters Assn., particularly if it entices FCC Chairman Wayne Coy to take the helm. It would be calamitous to have more than one trade association. The wise course is to remodel the NAB. The answer could be through its separation into units — AM, FM and TV; affiliated and non-affiliated. Then let each unit pay its own way, with a portion of the dues to go to the general administrative operation. What the old-liners want is a healthy cut in their dues and a corresponding cut in NAB plush activities. In less than two months the newly constituted NAB board meets again. No board since the reorganization of 1938 has faced a more arduous task. It is a task of survival. Borsch TV Circuit NOW COMES the voice of the Kremlin with the claim that television was invented by a Russian. This follows the claim that radio was the brain-child of Soviet inventive genuis; that a Ruskie Joe Doakes did the telephone job, and that borcht-zuppers invented everything save the hot-dog. If, by a Russian, the Kremlin means Zworkyin, or that Sarnoff 's foresight was responsible for its economic evolution, or that Goldmark had something to do with electronic color, we would understand. But these eminent Americans, who had their antecedents in the Old World, were wise enough to leave for the Land of Opportunity, where they could give rein to their genuis. These Kremlin connivers also seem to have overlooked such names as Farnsworth, the young inventor who put together an electronic TV system in the 'Twenties, and DuMont, who was the genius behind the cathode ray tube — the heart of modern TV. Oh, yes. The name of this Russian inventor is Boris Rosing. Could it be that Stalin's prevaricators are looking at TV through Rosing colored glasses? VICTOR JOHN ANDREW BROADCASTERS know Dr. Victor J. Andrew as the manufacturer of a quality line of antenna equipment and the author of numerous articles on the economicr-of broadcasting. But the military knows him as builder of "bicycle pumps" for warplanes. Before the war, it was common practice to blow moisture out of coaxial cables by compressed nitrogen. The AAF expected to use this method to keep radar compartments dry. But there arose the problem of handling those bulky nitrogen cylinders — and there was the ever-present weight factor, too. Dr. Andrew had the answer. Taking an ordinary tire pump, he housed its barrel in a chamber of slica-gel. Passing the air through this chamber guaranteed that the output would be entirely dry. When America's armada of fighters set out to polish off the Japs, the radar set underneath the wing of each plane had been pressurized by an Andrew dry-air pump — so had the radar guided missiles, used in the final stages of the war. By V-J Day, the Andrew Corp. had produced about 20,000 units. This impromptu invention typifies the resourcefulness of Victor John Andrew, six-footthree, 225-pound giant-of-a-man, who has been an "improvisor" since his high school days in Wooster, Ohio. Born on a farm in nearby Medina County, Aug. 31, 1902, he set up "shop" as a teen-ager in the back seat of his car and set forth as Wooster's first mobile radio serviceman. He was a ham operator at 15, and during his undergraduate days at Wooster College, worked on radio wave propagation in association with the U.S. Naval Lab at Washington. Graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1926, he became a junior engineer at the U.S. Signal Corps Lab at Ft. Monmouth, N. J. On June 13 Wooster College will honor Dr. Andrew with a Doctor of Science degree — to be awarded "on the basis of his scientific attainments." Resolved to learn radio engineering via the scientific, or pure, approach, he entered the U. of Chicago 18 months later, headed for a master's degree in physics. His thesis on radio wave propagation so impressed Westinghouse engineers that they offered him a job at the firm's radio transmitter plant at Chicopee Falls, Mass. A year later, the Dept. of Commerce selected him to head up its development program for frequency measuring equipment at Grand Island, Neb. Shooting for a doctor's degree, Mr. Andrew returned to the U. of Chicago in 1930 and branched into X-ray theory and the study of cosmic rays. He was one of 13 scientists who (Continued on page 63) BROADCASTING • Telecasting