Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1959)

and network colorcasting this month. In a brochure, just released to the trade, Crosley presents results of a survey in Cincinnati which shows that color programs rated twice as high in color tv homes as the same programs in blackand-white homes. This pattern was consistent among all seven programs tested. Before local color programming began there, about 6% of RCA tv set sales were color; today 20% are, the brochure also states. Crosley tv stations are WLWT; WLWD (TV) Dayton, Ohio; WLWC (TV) Columbus, Ohio, and WLWA (TV) Atlanta. WFIL-TV expands local color schedule WFIL-TV Philadelphia starts telecasting weekly feature films in color Nov. 18. World's Best Movies (Wed. 11:15 p.m.) will add about two hours to the station's color tv schedule. In October WFIL-TV began colorcasting the RCA Tv newsreel and Bell Telephone's What's the Weather? twice each week night. WFIL-TV also colorcasts Starr Theatre and breakfast time shows on weekdays. Among the World's Best movies: "Drums Along the Mohawk" with Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda; "Centennial Summer" with Jeanne Crain and Cornel Wilde; "Inspector General" with Danny Kaye and Walter Slezak; "Dodge City" starring Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland, and "The Magic Box" with Robert Donat and Sir Laurence Olivier. Medical network may start in fall of '60 NBC Radio hopes to have its new medical-service fm network (Closed Circuit, Sept. 14) in operation by next fall. Authorities confirmed this objective last week, although they emphasized that it was tentative. Called Medical Radio System, the new service is designed to deliver news about developments in the medical field direct to doctors' offices via multiplex fm. It will be offered to doctors at a fee of $120 a year, including equipment, and NBC hopes to start with 16 markets, expanded gradually to about 70. Except that the markets in which NBC owns stations presumably would be included, the market list was not disclosed. Stations would be paid to carry the service but authorities said the compensation formula had not been worked out. Programming • MRS, whose development is headed by Henry T. Sjogren, would be programmed 12 hours a KTBC keeps alert KTBC, Austin's only 24-hour in-city station, played a vital role in warning the public during a gas pipeline break which posed an explosion threat to the Texas city. Minutes after the first alarm was sounded at 3:20 a.m., KTBC announcer Jack Wallace started broadcasting police requests to keep pilot lights turned out, refrain from lighting matches or turning on electric lights, for fear that a spark would set off an explosion. By dawn, stations all over the country were calling KTBC. A three man staff was set up to handle the calls and report via beeper phone the lastest developments on the gas leak. Dr. Fred Crawford, research sociologist at Texas U. made an on-the-spot survey of the most vitally afflicted area immediately after the scare. "It was astonishing," he stated, "how many families depended on radio and more specifically, KTBC." Police cars, it was reported, cruised streets and by loudspeakers urged Austin residents to wake up and listen to the local station. day, five days a week. There would be three quarter-hour "newscasts" a day summarizing latest news and information from medical journals and other sources. These would be repeated often enough so that doctors could be sure of not missing one. In between the programming would be music. The new service is designed to help solve one of doctors' most pressing problems — keeping up with new developments in their field. NBC officials said studies had indicated that the average physician has only 75 minutes a day to spend reading about his profession. The copy would be prepared under the direction of an editor with medical training. Overall policy is to be directed by a medical board composed of "distinguished leaders of the profession" and headed by Dr. Chester Scott Keefer. He is president-elect of the American College of Physicians and executive director of Boston U. School of Medicine, Massachusetts Memorial Hospital Medical Center. Other board members will be named before the end of the year, NBC said. The board also will "assure the medical profession that the highest ethical and professional standards will be observed in the development of all aspects of the service." Existence of MRS was seen as a valu able public service in times of emergency— epidemics, national disaster, medical alerts or other situations in which large numbers of doctors must be contacted quickly. The facilities also will be available to local and area medical associations, public health services, etc., at no extra cost, for broadcasting information of special interest to physicians. Broadcasters warned: watch new labor law Broadcasters were warned last week that there are criminal penalties in the new labor law (S. 1555) which could, under unforeseen circumstances, cause trouble. The danger signal was given by Charles H. Tower, NAB manager of broadcast personnel and economics. Mr. Tower made his remarks in a speech to the Federal Communications Bar Assn. in Washington Nov. 4. The section to which Mr. Tower was referring, he said, was that requiring an employer to report expenditures made for the purpose of committing an unfair labor practice. Violation is punishable by fine or imprisonment — the first time, Mr. Tower emphasized, that a criminal sanction had been imposed in labor law. All other labor laws, Mr. Tower stated, are based on administrative remedies. "This section," Mr. Tower said, "raises the possibility of a back-door criminal sanction for unfair labor practices." Mr. Tower said that he considered the ban on coercive picketing and secondary boycotts as the most significant of the provisions of the new labor laws. The Labor bills were passed by Congress last summer (Broadcasting, Sept. 14). Meanwhile, NAB President Harold E. Fellows announced the membership of the 1959-60 Labor Relations Advisory Committee. The committee has Ward L. Quaal, WGN-AM-TV Chicago, as chairman, and includes: Richard M. Brown, KPOJ Portland, Ore.; Charles H. Crutchfield, WBTV (TV) Charlotte, N.C.; William C. Fitts Jr.. CBS; Richard L. Freund. ABC; Harold Grams, KSD-AM-TV St. Louis, Mo.; William Grant, KOA-AM-TV Denver; B. Lowell Jacobsen, NBC; Leslie C. Johnson, WHBF-AM-TV Rock Island, 111.: Robert B. Jones Jr., WFBR Baltimore: Edwing C. Kelly, KCRA-AM-TV Sacramento. Calif.; Carl E. Lee, Fetzer Broadcasting Co.; Odin S. Ramsland, KDAL Duluth, Minn.; Calvin J. Smith, KFAC Los Angeles, Calif., and Hulbert Taft Jr., Taft Broadcasting Stations. BROADCASTING, November 9, 1959 83