Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

; INTERVIEW I A: One approach that we hope to take to try to sell color television sets — and that's going to be the big problem over the next year — is instead of doing so many things on the air, to do closed circuits to department stores. We want to do a show where we have a lot of color, maybe a ten-minute show, say the first ten minutes of every hour, and have sets throughout the stores, so that as many people in New Orleans can see color television as possible. One of the reasons we built the separate color studio was so we could do that sort of operation all day long, completely separate from our regular on-the-air performances. Q: If the price of color sets comes down and circulation starts increasing within a year, do you figure you will be in color pretty deep? A: Yes. Q: Do you look for a good sale of color sets before the winter season is over? A: Not unless there's a break in the price. I think that will have to come sooner or later, but I don't think it's going to come until more manufacturers become active in the field. Q: From what you've been doing so far, you think you're pretty well ready for color? A: Oh, yes. I think we have the foundation on which to build. Q: And the departments are getting experience and you have the trained people in each department? A: We might have to add some personnel, according to how far we get into this. For instance, we may need extra light people who work as light directors on shows. We probably will need more people in the graphic art department and the scenic design department. Administration and production-wise, from the standpoint of directors and similar personnel, I doubt that we will have to increase our staff much. We will interchange people in black-andwhite and color operations as requirements demand. Q: You have done a lot of pioneering in color. Have you any lessons from your experience that you might offer other stations? A: I can tell them what we did, and what we didn't do. Instead of going just into slide and film, for example, we went into a live camera operation. We had two cameras ordered and I asked that only one be delivered because we wanted to see how effectively that one would operate before we started with two and we thought for our immediate small efforts that one would be sufficient. But I would rather have had the live camera than the slide and film equipment. I think it's terribly important for a station to train its personnel in color. Color is inevitable. I have a feeling that in tv it isn't going to be like the use of color in motion pictures, which has been spotty. You and I would just about as soon go to a black-and-white picture, if the story was good and the talent was good, as to see a color picture. Color is not an essential in motion pictures even today. I think it will be an essential in television and I think packaging alone will determine that. It won't be audience demand, probably, quite so much as client demand. The minute one national advertiser in the food business goes into color with his packaging and his programming, the others will almost have to follow. That's true of cigarettes, soaps, all national brands. The minute you get one into color, the second advertiser in the same field of equal strength isn't going to be happy to see a ghost of his product and his package while the other fellow is showing his in its true colors. Once the price of sets goes down and a few leading advertisers in the various fields get into color, I think the rest will follow like sheep, and that's going to make your local programming look awful bad. If you have a lot of network color and it's interspersed with gray locally, it's not going to be a heads up operation. I'm perfectly confident that color is inevitable and I mean a full color and that we're not going to wind up with a patchwork business of part blackand-white and part color. It's going to be all color. Q: You have spent a lot of money in your color development work. Will it be a long time before you recover it? A: Including our new building, which we would not have required had it not been for color, we will have something like a halfmillion dollars invested in color before we're really equipped. It takes a long time to get a half-million dollars back. MEMORANDUM ON COLOR WBAL-TV Baltimore broadcast an entire month of its Monday-Friday 'Homemakers' program in color. When it was over, Director John Michael White wrote an intra-station memorandum describing this practical test of the new medium. It follows. DOING The Homemakers in color is fun. This may not be the most practical aspect of our first month's programming, but it has resulted in a refreshed outlook of all concerned. The interest shown in the challenges inherent in colorcasting, and in surmounting these challenges, has been an important part of our color operation. In the last four weeks of daily colorcasting I feel we have learned more than in the previous months of occasional or one-shot color shows. Although I cannot speak for the engineering department, the evidence is that the equipment has reached a status quo, and is able to maintain it. One equipment failure in 20 [see box] for a new operation seems to me an excellent record. (Remember, the second b-&-w show could have gone in color, had the director not cancelled it.) Given the right conditions, the color achieved can be counted upon to be excellent, definitely up to, and in many instances exceeding, network results. The "color mixer," with which we turn b-&-w slides into color slides, is a great aid and is capable of very useful color effects. Contrast is the bug-a-boo of colorcasting. The smallest "bright-white" object in a scene can cause us trouble, since a white object causes an intense video "spike." To darken BOXSCORE: 20 SHOWS Color: 18 B-&-W: 2* * 1 equipment failure just before airtime 1 equipment failure repaired in time for show but director had set show for b-&-w, so cancelled color. the white object down to controllable limits, the rest of the picture must be darkened too. hence poor color. This is especially marked where flesh tones (faces, hands) are concerned. For ideal color television, all objects should be, although of different colors, of the same general tone and intensity. But what is ideal for color would turn a b-&-w screen into a confusing mass of similar shades of grey. So we come to our first problem, that of achieving enough contrast for black-and-white, while maintaining it within the limits of the color camera. Allied with the problem of contrasts is the question of getting close enough to see the subject. In b-&-w tv the camera position can often overcome the contrast question. A camera shooting down and tight on a sizzling steak can show the steak in great detail, even if it is on an all-white or allblack platter. This shooting down-and-tight is beyond our present capabilities. With the Zoomar lens on the color camera, the camera remains about 15 ft. from the action; we find this an almost happy medium between wide shot and tight shot. "Almost happy" because we would often like to be either tighter or wider, but the zoom has its own limits within which we must work. This 15 ft. working distance also precludes shooting down — a definite hindrance in the Page 78 • January 16, 1956 Broadcasting • Telecasting