Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

TRADE ASSNS. continued SMPTE TOLD EUROPE TV LINK NEAR • Halstead says it will be developed in 'next few years' • Assn. of Cinema Labs develops standards for better tv film product, "disappearing shows and costlier scripts" have made this an impossibility. He felt script costs have soared and that this phenomenon has left the producer with no recourse but to hire experienced writers. Miss Burkey scored Mr. Brodkin by asking for his script budget. Mr. Brodkin pegged it at $4,000 per hour-long script, to which Miss Burkey replied that the WGAE minimum for an hour script is $1,100. Mr. Felton interjected that this minimum does not account for the margin added by the writers' agents. Miss Burkey replied. "What the agents do is their bailiwick," but added that it is inexcusable that producers encourage writers to work "on speculation." Tex., Okla. AWRT Groups Elect The Texas and Oklahoma chapters of American Women in Radio & Television elected officers during the first southwestern area conference, held recently in Dallas for chapters from Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas and Arizona. New Texas officers include Helen Caldwell, KFDM Beaumont, president; Phaybrice Paymer, KDET Center, secretary, and Jo Moore, Aylin Adv., Houston, treasurer. Vice presidents: Margaret McDonald, WBAP Fort Worth; Maudeen Marks, Gregory-Giezendanner Agency, Houston; Marian Thomas, KGNC Amarillo, and Margaret Morrison, Pitluk Adv., San Antonio. New vice president in Oklahoma is Gloria Bremkamp, free lancer, Oklahoma City. New directors: Suzanne Robbins, KWTV (TV) Oklahoma City; Marj Hawkins, WKY-TV Oklahoma City; Dollie Talkington, KVSO-TV Ardmore; Betty Boyd, KOTV (TV) Tulsa, and Kathy King, KTUL Tulsa. Intercontinental television between North America and Europe was termed "an inevitable development within the next few years" by William Halstead, president of Unitel Inc., New York, at the 82nd SemiAnnual Convention of the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers in Philadelphia last Tuesday. The six-day meeting opened at the Sheraton Hotel Oct. 4. Mr. Halstead's report, presented to the convention by Ellis W. D'Arcy, vice chairman of the session dealing with international tv, described the North Atlantic Relay Communication System (NARCOM) which could link the U. S. and Canada with Europe without the need for water-based relays. Projected over a route through Canada to Labrador, Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands and the British Isles, ihe system would follow an island chain in which "the greatest distance to be spanned between land masses would be the 290-mile stretch between Iceland and the Faeroes," the report stated. Experiments with a new method of radiowave transmission known as troposphericscatter propagation have shown that transmission over several hundred miles is possible without relays, Mr. Halstead said. He added: "It is believed that the most direct action toward the establishment in the near future of a wide-band telecommunication relay system across the Atlantic will come as a necessary extension of the existing wide band relay facilities that link the numerous radar stations now operated by cooperating military services of the nations in the NATO area. Here, the current use of coordinated radar systems for plotting and controlling the movements of military and civil aircraft over international areas already has developed the need for wide-band relay facilities for rapid communications and data exchange between radar stations and distant command points." Concurrent with the SMPTE convention, the Assn. of Cinema Labs, was in meeting in Philadelphia and, at the request of advertising agencies and television stations, a committee of the association adopted a set of recommended practices, designed to improve film for tv broadcast. Many of the members also attended the SMPTE sessions. The committee, headed by William E. Gephart, of General Film Lab., Hollywood, submitted a six-page report for approval of the ACL membership. The report includes recommendations for the photographing of black and white and color films for tv, as well as camera area dimensions, room projector apertures and comments on set lighting techniques. The report outlines the control of negative and positive prints, giving instructions and photographic measurements for each type of film stock used. A SMPTE session on color television Wednesday included a paper on "Performance Objectives for Color Television Picture Tubes" by John B. Chatten, Philco Corp. Mr. Chatten compared the color-signal processing and electron-optical techniques applicable to the three-gun shadow-mask tube and the single-gun beam-index tube, with particular reference to the following performance objectives: Resolution and picture structure, registration and color fringing, color purity, contrast and accuracy of hue reproduction. A paper by E. E. Gloystein and N. O. Kellaway, both RCA, described a new color monitor, the RCA TM-2 1 , which is designed as "a major tool in color tv plants." The monitor, according to the authors, can serve both as a "high-quality picture display device and as an instrument for judging the quality of color tv signals." William J. Wagner, KRON-TV San Francisco, submitted a paper pointing to a solution for some of the major problems encountered by artists working in color television. He reported on the development of a color palette at KRON-TV, which reduces the number of paints needed to produce color artwork, and catalogues the basic colors, intermixtures of these colors and the desaturation of all these colors. During a session on television stations, W. H. Hartman, KCRA-TV Sacramento, and R. A. Isberg, Ampex Corp., reported on automatic techniques introduced at KCRA-TV. Through the use of magnetic tape recordings, they said, local announcements are prepared for use with film and OFFICERS elected Oct. 1 at the Springfield meeting of Illinois Broadcasters Assn. [Trade Assns., Oct. 7] are (seated, 1 to r) : R. Karl Baker, WLDS Jacksonville, vice president; Charles R. Cook, WJPF Herrin, president; George C. Biggar, WLBK DeKalb, retiring president. Standing, M. H. Stuckwish, WSOY Decatur, secretarytreasurer; Jim Firmin, WMOK Metropolis, director; Adlai C. Ferguson, WPRS Paris, director; Bruce Dennis, WGN Chicago, director. Page 52 • October 14, 1957 Broadcasting