Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

local products. The city is a milling center, with soft Washington wheat blended with hard strains from Montana. Huge elevators permit storage of grain. A favorable factor in Seattle's growth is the revival of Orient commerce. J. Elroy McCaw, head of the McCaw station group that includes KTVW (TV) Seattle, says many western Washington distributor franchises include the sprouting Alaskan cities, for which Seattle is gateway. British Columbia, with expanding Vancouver and rich new oil fields, is commercially close to Seattle, he explained. Hugh Smith of the Wesley Dumm station, KXA, said the Seattle-Tacoma airport is an active overseas air terminal, with a heavy volume of transcontinental passengers in 1954 and more last year. The modern terminal already is debt-free. Like sea traffic, Orient-bound planes follow the short great-circle route running close to Alaska. Young leadership keeps the Seattle market aggressive and progressive, he said. John Dubuque of KXA development of the newer electronics and similar fabricating industries will be rapid. The Seattle defense story takes a bit of looking into, a market-minded observer will quickly find out. Essentially it is the dominant industrial force in the area. Boeing has a strung-out plant employing around 36,000 with a payroll that's not far from $200 million a year. Since youthful William E. Boeing twisted a hoop of wire and bunch of sticks into a 1916-model air demon, the plant has become a top builder of commercial and military aircraft. It gave the nation the flying fortress and B-29 in World War II and since has led the field in the domestic jet bomber and passenger craft race. Boeing's 8-jet B-52 bomber is the new intercontinental striking force. A four-jet cousin for tanker use, and other jets are military favorites. And Boeing's new 707 passenger prototype, which flew to Washington, D. C, and returned last October in little over eight hours, is ahead of the field. At $4.5 million per copy, the 707 has been THIS IS PART of Seattle's harbor, with the Alaskan Way double-decker highway beyond piers. In background is the hilly segment of the city's main commercial area. added, "The land and resources are here. The Northwest has the unlimited opportunity of a young area." Lincoln W. Miller, assistant to owner Saul Haas of KIRO, put it this way, "Seattle, western Washington and the state have one of the greatest growth potentials of any part of the United States. Arrival of natural gas this year will bring in more new industries." Mrs. Vernice D. Irwin, KVI, is "constantly amazed" at the way the market is growing. "This will be the main metropolis of the West Coast," she predicted. "Seattle gets a solid type of new citizen who wants to work and get high wages." As gateway to Korea, Seattle attracted many troops going and coming to and from the battleground, she said. Mr. Brandt, after several years in the Pacific Northwest, can't see how anything can stop the area from growing, with its industry, commerce, new plants, cheap power, nearby refineries and defense facilities. James L. Middlebrooks, technical director of the KING stations properties and management appointee to the affiliated KTLV (TV), ch. 8 permittee (merger of KGW and KTLV awaits FCC action), said ordered by American (30), Pan American (20) and Braniff (5), and Continental. Other orders loom in a race with Douglas and Lockheed. Boeing dropped a lot of money in winning the race to put the first big American jet into the air, but with guided missile, nuclear power jet engine and other projects it now can boast a $2 billion backlog of orders. The Puget Sound naval shipyard keeps up to 14,000 workers busy in fleet repair and air carrier conversion to the new canted decks. A single carrier conversion runs $40 million. The Seattle-area naval shipyard facilities are turning out two frigates at $25 million each. The payroll is the second largest in western Washington. Summed up, Seattle has mountains, deepwater access to the Pacific, strategic convenience for Orient traffic, narrow temperature range, fresh-water lakes, low-cost power, high literacy and home ownership, varied industries, four transcontinental railways, five commercial airlines and fishing in the front yard. AND THEN it has a friendly neighbor, Tacoma, which has most of these advantages but less than half the commercial expanse. Lumber is the largest payroll, including the Weyerhaeuser headquarters. Actually, Tacoma is older than Seattle, according to J. Archie Morton of KMO. Lumber dominance has given way to diversified industry, he said, citing such names in the "Forest Products Capital of America" as Kaiser Aluminum, American Smelting, and Pennsylvania Salt. "Tacoma is spreading to the south and west," he continued. "The Tacoma trading area is larger than Spokane though the city is not as large." Spokane will wade in with fists flying anytime its No. 2 ranking in the state is challenged, but Mr. Morton stands ready to stick to his claims. The Puget Sound deep waterway supports extensive port facilities, with improvement projects in prospect. The city's civic leaders want America's industries to know that Tacoma still has thousands of acres of tideflat sites whereas, they claim, Seattle has about used up its tidewater industrial land. Len Higgins, KTNT-AM-TV, listed such Tacoma assets as adjacent Fort Lewis, second largest permanent Army post in the nation; McChord Air Force Base, Mt. Rainier ordnance depot, gateways to Rainier and Olympic national parks, unbelievably fertile Puyallup Valley and a new mile-long Narrows Bridge across Puget Sound. Out on a protruding tongue of land is Point Defiance, a 638-acre virgin wilderness. Mention anything Seattle has, and a Tacoma booster answers, "We've got it, too." Tacoma shares Seattle's work opportunities at the Boeing plant and other industries. The rush-hour traffic along Route 99 is dense, and residents of the two cities obviously share a lot of each other's dollars. It's a sort of Minneapolis-St. Paul twincity arrangement — one enormous market or two big ones, depending on the commercial perspective. SPOKANE IN SPOKANE, capital of the "Inland Empire", they measure distance out to the suburbs with a yardstick 100 miles long. This city of 186,000 persons (Jan. 1, 1956, estimate) is described under usual metropolitan area definitions (Spokane County) as a market of 260,000 whose dwellers last year spent $334 million in 2,500 retail establishments. But anyone who tries to measure Spokane by the usual metropolitan area standards will find out in a hurry that it just isn't that simple. There still should be included, they insist in Spokane, a group of blooming "suburbs" tied into the market by natural and merchandising links — such suburbs as Pullman (75 miles away), Sandpoint (76 miles), Ephrata (121 miles), Wenatchee (168 miles) and Yakima (220 miles), to mention a few. These cities, and many others, belong to a four-state marketing kingdom that did a 1955 retail business of at least $1.3 billion (projection of 1954 Census data). The favorite name, Inland Empire, grew out of media efforts to convince New York's Madison Ave. (2,653 miles) that its advertising experts haven't yet discovered a farm and industrial economy of vast area and wealth. The Inland Empire is defined to include 19 counties in Washington, 10 in Idaho, six Page 82 • January 9, 1956 Broadcasting • Telecasting