Broadcasting (Apr - June 1960)

L.A. CONVENTION ASSIGNMENTS Radio-tv space, pooling jobs revealed Assignments of space in the Los Angeles Sports Arena and Biltmore Hotel for the news media representatives covering the Democratic National Convention to be held July 11-15, have been announced by J. Leonard Reinsch, executive director of the convention. In the arena where the convention sessions will be held, the tv and radio networks have been given space on the ground floor surrounding the delegates section: ABC in the northwest section, CBS in the southwest and NBC in the southeast. Each of these networks will spend approximately $250,000 in equipping their sections. They will contain space for newsrooms, makeup, previews, audio maintenance, art work, dark rooms, film editing areas, engineering operations, transmissions, video control, client and executive offices, plus radio studios and control rooms. MBS, for radio only, will have space to the left of the north entrance to the convention floor. About 950 of the 5,500 men and women covering the convention for newspapers, magazines and newsreels as well as the broadcast media will be on the floor of the convention, along with cameramen occupying eight platforms. Around the perimeter of the delegates section, along with the networks, will be located 12 sound studios for independent radio and tv organizations. Their locations have been assigned by the Radio Gallery in Washington, D.C. As it was in 1956, television from the floor will be handled on a pool basis, Mr. Reinsch said. ABC won the straw pulling contest for video and CBS for audio both radio and tv. Ted Grenier, chief engineer, ABC Western Div., will be the video engineer for ABC, and Gil Wyland, studio operations manager, CBS, West Coast, will be audio engineer. Pool Arrangements ■ The six tv cameras on the floor, to be supplied by ABC, will feed pictures of the convention into six monitors in the tv pool control room directly behind the rostrum, adjoining the ABC studios. There, the pool producer, director, assistant director, technical director, audio and video engineers and light direction engineer will work. One picture will be selected for feeding to all three networks; each network director will decide whether or not to take the pooled feed at any particular time. The networks will all contribute manpower and equipment to the pool and will share the costs evenly. A two-floor installation in the arena itself and a 12,000 square feet media pavilion next to it will be occupied by news media, communications services, photo labs and the like. In the area adjacent to the north stairs there will be a studio for interviews by the independent tv and motion picture newsreel. A convention innovation will be three post office substations, two in the arena, one at the Biltmore. There will also be two lounges in -the arena, an airlines lounge for delegates and a railroad lounge for media representatives only. The networks’ hotel assignments are: ABC, Rooms 3200-14; CBS, Rooms 3305-21; MBS, Rooms 3100-04; NBC, Rooms 3105-21. These rooms are located on the third floor of the Biltmore, but in various wings of the building. NBC also has been given space in the foyer of the ballroom for use in the early morning hours, to produce the Today program. News media headquarters will be set up in the Biltmore Bowl and the Rex Room just below it, Mr. Reinsch announced. “On the floor of the bowl,” he said, “will be set up an ideal joint news conference area. The person being interviewed will speak from what normally is used as the band platform. In front of him we will have 250 seats — as many as at the White House news conferences — for the men and women of the press and broadcasting. On what normally is tier one, we have six fixed camera positions. The still photographers, too, will have plenty of room for their ‘just one more’.” Some newspapers and news magazines have been assigned space in the bowl for their working newsmen. Others, including the Associated Press and United Press International, will be housed in the Rex Room, down the escalator from the bowl. Here too will be located the news crews of WTOPAM-FM-TV Washington, D.C., and KLAC Los Angeles, as well as Hearst Tv/ News. There will also be a general press room for use by all correspondents. Recording merger Merger of Radio Recorders, Radio Recorders Equipment Co. and MP-TV Services with Universal Recorders, all of Hollywood, into a new company, Radio-Universal Recorders, was announced Thursday (May 19). 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