Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

alone totaled $62.3 billion last year, well exceeding San Francisco's $42.3 billion. Debits have almost doubled in five years. • Retail sales for metropolitan Los Angeles are greatest in the West, estimated at more than $7.6 billion for 1955, 15% higher than the previous year and almost double 1946. In the past 10 years per capita sales have jumped from $995 to over $1,360. • As top wholesale center in the West, Los Angeles has 9,000 firms selling in this field. It now also challenges San Francisco as first world trade port on the coast. • Other economic indicators: Los Angeles International Airport traffic up 18% last year to more than 3 million passengers, 144% greater than first full year's operation in 1947; freight car loadings up to 1.2 million cars in 1955, up from 887,800 cars previous year; telephones in service topped 3 million last year, doubled since 1947. • Recap: In only 25 years, Los Angeles' population has increased 2.3 times, employment 2.75 times, factory workers 5.5 times and value added by manufacture over 10 times. Number of factories trebled. Since 1940, Los Angeles has absorbed population equal to Philadelphia; since 1950, equivalent of Cleveland or St. Louis. "And by 1965 we will have passed Chicago and be the biggest market outside of New York," local businessmen proclaim. Looking for a City "Los Angeles is a couple of dozen suburbs looking for a city," one native quipped. In a sense it is true. On a map showing municipal boundaries, the city of Los Angeles looks as if you unloaded your fountain pen on the table cloth. It flows northwest in a big blot from the downtown Civic Center through Hollywood and over the mountains into San Fernando Valley. Streaks of it run zig-zag south to soak up Wilmington and San Pedro at the harbor, or west in broad fingers reaching for the beach around Santa Monica and Venice. Then there are hunks washed out of the big blot here and there, like Beverly Hills, Culver City or the city of San Fernando. But nobody but the county sheriff is concerned about the political lines. The bulk of the county's more than 100 unincorporated communities and 45 incorporated cities are concentrated in or near the great coastal basin and they blend and intermingle to such a degree few people know or care where one division begins or ends. If you ask friends in Westwood, west of Beverly Hills, why they write a letter to an acquaintance in the eastern extreme of the city when they want to invite him to Sunday dinner, you will be told, "Why, I wouldn't telephone. It's a long distance call." City fathers originally ruled that buildings could not be over 13 stories because of the earthquake hazard. Instead of going up, construction of new buildings spread out as the population and industrial growth occurred. (No earthquake has ever knocked down a Class A structure.) Los Angeles County is not big for Southern California, but it has 2.6 million acres (4,071 square miles) measured about 75 miles north and south and 70 miles east and west at the widest. As a metropolitan area, Los Angeles also includes Orange County, Page 80 • January 30, 1956 the state's second smallest county immediately to the south. Nearly half of Los Angeles County is mountainous with more than 600,000 acres in the Angeles National Forest and nearly 90,000 acres in the Los Padres National Forest. Most of the mountain area is in the northern portion of the county behind the densely populated coastal plain and adjacent valley. This is the San Gabriel Range which joins the San Bernardino Mountains to the east. Old Baldy is the highest, 10,080 ft., while nine other peaks exceed 8,000 ft. Behind Pasadena northeast of the Civic Center Mt. Wilson and Mt. Lowe rise sharply to more than 5,700 ft., the former sprouting television transmitting antennas of the Los Angeles stations. Across the mountain range is Antelope Valley, whose major community is Lancaster. West and northwest of Los Angeles are the 3,000 ft. Santa Monica Mrs., which form the southern enclosure of the San Fernando Valley and extend west to the ocean. The Los Angeles area, like other coastal areas in Southern California, enjoys what the Weather Bureau calls "one of the most equable climates in the U. S." Frequently compared with the Mediterranean, the climates is also described as "cool with a warm sun." Temperature at the beach usually holds around 75° during the summer although the sun is hot. Valley temperatures are considerably higher. But no matter how hot the day, most nights are cool, even in luly. Winters are mild and a sunny day is like late spring elsewhere. But Los Angeles has a weather headache that some claim will drive away as many people as are coming in if it is not corrected: Smog. Technically, it is a mixture of fog, smoke and organic chemical materials emitted into the air by automobile exhausts, backyard incinerators, gasoline refining and other industry. It becomes concentrated in the coastal basin when a "temperature inversion" eliminates the normal breezes that would push it up and away. Auto firms are spending a million dollars in research to curb auto exhaust, and local industry has already spent $35 million on devices to keep pollutants out of the air. With efforts such as these, there is hope that the smog eventually will be licked. Once a month Mamaroneck, N. Y., moves to metropolitan Los Angeles. Or it might be Scarsdale, N. Y. But Scarsdale would have to pick up another 2,000 people along the way to make up the 16,000 population increase of metropolitan Los Angeles (Los Angeles and Orange counties) every 30 days. The population surge in Los Angeles began in the 1880's when a rate war between the Southern Pacific and the newly completed Santa Fe brought trainloads of speculators and settlers into the sleepy little MexicanAmerican pueblo. The population tripled in the decade 1880-90 to 101,454. In the next 20 years — due mostly to the development of San Pedro as a harbor, the production of oil and the then tremendous construction of the Owens River Aqueduct which brought vitally needed water to the city — the population grew to half a million. In 20 more years, 1930, it was 2.3 million in the metropolitan area, and in 10 more, 1940, 2.9 million. World War II boomed aircraft, shipbuilding, metals, synthetic rubber. Workers streamed to defense plants, and stayed on after the war. The 1950 census counted nearly 4.4 million in 1950. More than 5.5 million now live in the metropolitan area, with 2.2 million in the Los Angeles city limits. There were enough new homes built in Los Angeles county last year (105,000), to house the entire population of Oklahoma City, Providence, Syracuse or lacksonville. More homes were built in this single county than in such states as Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey or Pennsylvania. Greatest growth of new dwelling units followed the growth patterns of the various communities. Whittier and Norwalk have nearly doubled their total since 1950 while the San Fernando Valley and Pomona-foothills each gained 50% in that time. There is great new construction of office, school and industrial buildings, too. Typical examples are in any section; one might be RCA, whose new modern factory is in the Vail Field area of the central manufacturing district. It will be complete with landscaping, the California touch that industry frequently forgets in other areas. Douglas Aircraft has added $2 million worth of new buildings in Culver City while the U. of California at Los Angeles is making multiple-million dollar expansions of its campus at Westwood, including a $22 million medical center. Then there is Conrad Hilton's plush $11 million Beverly Hilton Hotel at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvds. in Beverly Hills which was opened last year. Displaying one luxury private dining room, the maitre d'hotel explained casually with a gesture toward an ornate pair of fountains in the wall, "And through these we can run colored water, perfume or champagne." But all is not as glamorous as the newest Beverly Hills hostelry. Some other new facilities under construction are even more necessary. A persistent struggle against ocean and mountain is being fought at White Point in San Pedro as deep sea divers and hard rock miners daily risk their lives to complete a $12.5 million tunnel — a sewer. Their struggle is with progress, meeting the need of huge disposal for nearly 50 growing Los Angeles County communities. On land they are blasting a five-mile hole through the Palos Verdes Hills. Beneath the sea, fighting tides and dirty waters, divers guide by telephone the placement of 35-ton sections of outfall pipe which will run into the sea over 9,000 ft. to a depth of 215 ft. When completed next year it will be the biggest construction of its kind. Then there is rubbish: 2.1 million people threw 1.2 million tons of it into their trash baskets last year and the county is still worried over what to do with the increasing amount. It looks as though it will be landfill in uninhabited canyons of the mountains. The newest aspect welcomed by local economists — diversity. Los Angeles is the leading producer of aircraft and parts. It has become the nation's electronics center. Only Detroit assembles more automobiles and only Akron produces more tires and tubes. The western industrial capital's apparel Broadcasting • Telecasting