Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1957)

PERSONNEL RELATIONS MANUFACTURING caused 90% of the tv film companies to get their music from foreign recordings instead of American musicians. The suit seeks an injunction to restrain the tv film companies from making further royalty payments into the trust fund and another injunction to prevent AFM from taking punitive action against either the plaintiff musicians or their film company employers. Although aimed at the AFM, the suit also lists as defendants the union's president, James C. Petrillo; Samuel R. Rosenbaum, trustee of the funds, and more than 60 producers of tv films. The action is the third brought by a group of Hollywood musicians who want to upset AFM's trust fund payment policy and require that any extra payments negotiated by the union go to the musicians doing the work. The other suits, filed last fall, concern royalty payments by recording firms and re-use payments by the producers of film originally made for theatrical exhibition and subsequently sold for tv. ASCAP Re-elects Cunningham PAUL CUNNINGHAM has been re-elected to a second term as president of American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers. Other officers re-elected: Louis Bernstein and Otto A. Herbach, vice presidents; John Tasker Howard, secretary; Saul H. Bourne, treasurer; George W. Meyer, assistant secretary, and Frank H. Connor, assistant treasurer. You're in good company on WGN-RADIO Chicago Top-drawer advertisers are buying WGN Join the nation's smartest time-buyers who select WGN for results! 1957 promises exciting new programming to make WGN's policy of high quality at low cost even more attractive to you. Spot-Wobble System Described to SMPTE SPOT-WOBBLE, a system of making tv scanning lines quiver 15 million times a second on the face of the picture tube, may eliminate these objectionable lines, according to Westinghouse Research Laboratories. The new technique was revealed last Tuesday at the Washington convention of the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers. Francis T. Thompson, WRL research engineer, said the wobble is accomplished by splitting one of the picture tube's cylindrical metal grids used to focus the electron beam into a tiny round spot. This technique was developed by Dr. E. Atti and J. A. Hall, of the Westinghouse electronic tube division, Elmira, N. Y. Mr. Thompson in turn developed the linestructure reduction technique that employs electron beam wobbling as the spot tracks across the tv picture tube. A slight up-anddown motion of the beam broadens the white lines carrying picture information and narrows the in-between black lines. The spot-wobble method dates back several years, Mr. Thompson said, but was handicapped by equipment problems. The split-grid structure inside the tv picture tube eliminates these problems, with the split focusing grid still serving its regular function of sharply concentrating the electron beam on the screen. The wobble voltage is supplied by a single electronic tube fitted to a socket into which the picture tube is plugged. Spot-wobble still is in the experimental stage, Mr. Thompson said. He noted the normal viewing distance for a 24-inch picture tube is IOV2 feet, where the scanning lines start to disappear for the average viewer. He said that with the new method, the viewer will want larger pictures and perhaps view a 24-inch tube from a distance of about six feet. Among other highlights of the week-long SMPTE convention were: • A complete three-hour evening session on the Ampex video tape recorder, with technical explanations offered by an Ampex team comprising Charles P. Ginsberg, Charles Anderson, Kurt R. Machein and Robert A. Miner. • A proposal for wide-screen tv. discussed by Seymour Rosin and Madison Cawein, Grimson Color Inc., New York, whereby the Scanascope lens (similar to the anamorphic lens in motion pictures) enlarges the picture from the usual 4:3 ratio to 8:3. It was admitted this could not be transmitted over the air (it requires a nine mc band and a reverse optical system at the receiver), but has been used over a closed-circuit system. • Use of magnetic tape, which amounted to more than seven billion feet of quarterinch tape chiefly for sound recording in 1956, would increase by 70% in 1961, Barton Kreuzer, SMPTE president, told members at the kick-off luncheon last Monday. He also said that $90 million is allocated to telefilm production this year. Among the exhibits were Harwald Co.'s WESTINGHOUSE offers these contrastin pictures as evidence of what its "line struc ture reduction" technique can do. The one c left demonstrates normal scanning lines, the at right the "wobbled" line structure (se story). automatic film inspection machine — whic inspects, cleans, measures, counts splices and permits viewing and sound reading c 16 mm or 35 mm film; Unicorn Engineer ing Corp.'s portable Cleaner-Rewind; Pre; toseal Mfg. Corp.'s butt-weld Prestc Splicer; Andre Debrie Mfg. Corp.'s autc matic daylight film processor, and Zooma Inc.'s new reflector models. Navy Development Seen as Color Tv Aid A NEW and simplified approach to cole television is offered by the Navy in the wakf of its announcement of a revolutionary dc velopment in tv screens that originally we conceived to permit viewing in broad da} light with little loss of contrast. It is also expected these new findings ma pave the way for three dimensional viewing Several private television concerns hav indicated the development will be used in mediately in their laboratories, according t j the Navy, which declined to name the firm: Key to the new screen, developed by Di Charles Feldman of the Naval Researc Laboratory, Washington, is the placing c phosphor on thin transparent films, whic i in turn are deposited on the face of the t, tube. Under present procedures, opaqu white powders are sprayed on the tube causing the surface to reflect. In strong sur light the reflection becomes brighter tha the picture. With use of the new transparent film: sunlight passes through and is lost in th darkened interior of the tube. As a resu contrast is maintained even with bright da\ light shining on the tube face. The second advantage of transparer films is picture sharpness. Whereas conven tional powdered screens have a grainy te> ture that scatters light, the films show n grain and scatter none of the light. Both these features can be applied ac vantageously to color tv in its present ust according to the Navy. It was added th; transparent films can open a completely ne\ avenue to color. Here's how the Navy erij visions it: Films that create different colors can bj deposited one atop another and lighted sep Page 90 May 6, 1957 Broadcasting Telecastin