Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

nessmen will tell you. "Just look at us and what we are doing." The population of California went over the 13 million mark last year, a gain of 3.5% over the previous year. This is nearly double the 6.9 million of prewar 1940. Since 1950 population has increased 22% in California compared to 9% in the U. S. as a whole. The state is growing at twice the rate of national population increase. California's population now is increasing 450,000 every 12 months — equivalent to the entire city of Newark, N. J. U. S. Census estimates predict the state will hit 17 million by 1965. Total civilian employment has more than kept pace with population growth. Estimated 1955 average of 5.14 million workers was 3.6% above the previous year, about 25% above 1950 and nearly double 1940. Personal income is rising faster. Total wages and salaries climbed to an estimated $20.2 billion in 1955 with total income increasing to $29.4 billion, some 8.7% above 1954. Total income is more than 50% greater than in 1950 and five times 1940. The state is second only to New York. Manufacturing industries in California showed an increase of 5% last year in the number of wage and salary workers employed to an average of 1.1 million. Considering a 4%' wage boost during the year, this meant about a 9% rise in wages paid to an estimated $5.34 billion for 1955. Total wages have increased more than 2.6 times since 1947 (663,900 workers) and 10 times since 1939 (357,000 workers). Value added by manufacture* exceeded $9 billion last year, 127% above 1947 and eight times the 1939 total. While the U. S. as a whole showed capital investment last year in new and expanded manufacturing facilities to be only slightly higher than 1954, California industry spent an estimated 20% more in 1955 than i( did in 1954, a total of more than $500 million. Particularly large gains were made in the San Francisco-Oakland metropolitan area while Southern California continued its great postwar surge. Construction in California rose 16.7% last year to $4.9 billion. This year it is expected to increase another 7% to $5.25 billion. Gross cash farm income in 1955 went up 2% to $2.57 billion while agricultural returns in the nation fell off 3%. Although the U. S. Agriculture Dept. expects national farm income to decrease further in 1956, California will exceed or equal last year. California spent a whopping $18 billion last year for goods and services, 15% more than 1954, 55% more than 1948 and 465% more than 1939. Food sales are running at a $3.8 billion annual rate, gasoline $1 billion. New and used car sales in the state were around $3 billion. If you are reluctant to ride one of Aerojet-General Corp.'s rockets a hundred miles up to see what this vast market looks like, you can achieve the same result in the Ferry Bldg. at San Francisco. A big relief map shows easily how Cali * Value added by manufacture is the value of products shipped less the cost of materials, supplies, containers, fuel, purchased electric energy and contract work. fornia could reach from Boston to Charleston, S. C, if it were suddenly peeled off and pasted on the East Coast. Looking east you will quickly recognize the towering Sierra Nevadas and down the coast the less rugged Coastal Range. The great fertile central valley is split north along the Sacramento River Valley and south along the San Joaquin River. The split is the river delta feeding west into the San Francisco Bay area. The San Joaquin Valley, through intensive irrigation and cultivation, is considered the most productive agricultural area in the world. Where the bottom third of the state bends eastward, you can see how the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley is cupped within a half circle of the Tehachapi Mts., closing it off from Death Valley to the east and the reaches of the Mojave Desert and a portion of the Colorado Desert in the southeastern portion of the state. The great redwood forests range up the northern coast and partly across the top of the state, where rainfall hits 100 inches per EXPANDING MARKETS IN THIS, the sixth in a series of reports on the nation's changing market economy, B*T explores the pulsating California market. Earlier articles have covered The South (Nov. 15. 1954), Georgia (Dec. 27, 1954), The Carolinas (March 21, 1955), The Mid-Gulf States (June 27, 1 955 ) . and The Pacific Northwest (Jan. 9, 1956). year. This is the great watershed that will eventually brighten inland and southern deserts even more when its water runoff is caught and carried south in the growing system of river-like canals. "Folks usually picture California in four scenes, Yosemite National Park, Death Valley, Hollywood and groves of Sunkist oranges," a Ferry Bldg. worker said recently. "But there sure is an awful lot in between." Oil rigs bristle in the southern San Joaquin Valley and the south coastal areas near Long Beach. The citrus orchards, looking like fuzzy patches of coarse velvet from up high, scatter the landscape in three distinct areas. The largest area is from just north of Santa Barbara along the coast south to Mexico. Another swings from just below Fresno nearly to Bakersfield through an arc in the sunny foothills east of the San Joaquin Valley. The third area is a unique 30 by 20 mile thermal zone near the head of the Sacramento Valley. Water is the life blood of industry and agriculture anywhere and California has plenty of it, but not in the right places. The state either has too much, or too little. Witness the winter floods plaguing the northern communities and the cries of great shortage in the south and central valley areas where water tables have been drawn low by deep wells of farm and city. But a complex billion dollar system of dams and canals is changing things. President Eisenhower's budget asks $76.2 million for federal flood control projects in California. The massive Shasta Dam controls the Sacramento River from the head of its valley, while a string of existing and proposed dams down the western slopes of the Sierras will conserve resources for the central valley. In the dry southern extreme, water is flowing west from the Colorado River through the 569-mile Colorado River Aqueduct system to Los Angeles and through the All-American Canal into far southern Imperial Valley. Bakersfield is fed with water from Friant Dam northeast of Fresno. The southern area's soaring demands eventually will be eased by the bold but controversial Feather River project northeast of Sacramento. It will take the "wet" out of Christmas for Yuba-Marysville and splash it out evenly over thousands of thirsty acres as far down the state as San Diego. State observers have reported that the supplies of water to the cities in the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are sufficient now for twice the population there. This is of particular importance to the large industrial expansion of Los Angeles. The situation is equally favorable in the East Bay Municipal Utility District where San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy project can serve four times today's population in that area. When water falls, it can generate electricity. As steam it does it too. California power companies are using and expanding both techniques to keep pace with industrial and home consumption. Southern California Edison Co.. serving the southern area except for metropolitan Los Angeles, calls itself the fastest growing utility in the nation as it plans to match its expansion of the past decade in the next three years. "We will spend SI 23.5 million this year, 34% more than last, and a total $350 million by the end of 1958," a company official said. "We added 86.000 new meters last year — a whole city-full." Similarly, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., operating out of San Francisco and serving the northern portions of the state, is racing to keep up with the growth. It has spent $1.5 billion since World War II in this effort. Los Angeles' city-owned water and power department is putting finishing touches on its new $80 million outdoor-type steam generating plant in the San Fernando Valley to kick up enough kilowatts to supply a city of a million people. Also in the Valley. Southern California Edison has proposed to the Atomic Energy Commission that it be allowed to tap the heat of North American Aviation's $10 million sodium reactor experiment now under construction there. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. reflected the state expansion by spending about $119.2 million in Southern California and $115.7 in Northern California to keep up. The number of telephones increased to over 4.4 million last year, was 3.2 million in 1950 and 1.6 million in 1940. "In contrast to the national picture, gas and electric, telephone and other utility firms are planning substantial increases in capital expenditures," according to Herbert F. Ormsby, director of the California State Broadcasting • Telecasting January 30, 1956 • Page 73