Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 22, 1948)

Christmas Number CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 11 ILL the novelty of tele vision wear off altogether or will it have a detri mental effect on the future of movie houses? John J. Fitzgibbons and Spyros Skouras, among others, insist that television will eventually bring in greater patronage than ever before. But recently the Television Research Bureau of a Long IsJand university surveyed 274 fapassed their findings to advertismilies with television sets and ing men. Dr. Thomas E. Coffin, head of the bureau said: “The effect of owning a television set is to reduce the family’s dependence upon entertainments outside the home by one quarter and to realign sharply the amount of time given to competing activities within the home. Sports attendance suffers only slightly. Movie-going and reading decline about one fifth. Other commmercial entertainments drop off about one-third, while radio listeners is cut nearly in half.” Nor, said the Bureau, is the novelty of television wearing off. On the other hand, one doesn’t have to remember too far back to get to the time when radio was going to kill the movies. There is still comfort in what the late DeWolf Hopper wrote in his “Reminiscences,” published by Garden City, NY, in 1925: “As for radio, my generation on the stage can remember when roller skating had the theatre on its back for three successive years in the late eighties. The billboards were plastered with colored lithographs of bemedalled fancy skaters, and everyone was dashing from the supper table to the liverty stable hastily converted into a rink. I do not expect to see radio vanish as roller skating did, but I do know that the American housewife sees too much of the four walls of her home during the day to care to Spend all her evenings in the living room turning dials. She wants a change of scene, she wants to see and be seen in something more than a bungalow apron. This is constant human nature.” What Hopper wrote then is true today and will be true tomorrow, come television and eal PRR ENE SL SE ELE ENE 6 Y f 4 My Compliments AY Ni to You iN i ¥ HAROLD} : KAY 4 is 4 iN : i EAGLE-LION FILMS 8 ‘ Mie RNa RARE RARE TERE PARES TELEVISION Will It Be A Blight or Boon to the Business? whatever will replace it in time. HE Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “dog in the manger” attitude about television broadcasting, which has been editorially condemned in many parts of Canada, will delay the new medium for about two years —or more. The CBC has not the funds to establish it and will not permit that to be done by those who do have them. The CBC can find some support for its position from the radio applicants for licenses, who want the government agency to let them go ahead but at the same time ask that the movie industry be kept out of the field. This enabled the CBC to make a big thing out of the suggestion of one applicant that joint participation be entered into. Other radio applicants can’t see that. Had radio and movie people a better understanding on the subject of television, the CBC could not have taken its present position as confidently. Praise for the plans of Famous Players to bring television into the movie industry without keeping it out of radio was given in the CBC report. The CBC said it was impressed with: 1. The apparent uncertainty, in the opinion of the Board, of most of the applicants with regard to the quality and kind of service they will be able to broadcast. The Board felt that Famous Players Canadian Corporation put forward the best assurance of good service, but it noted emphatic objections made by counsel for the Canadian Association of Broadcasters to a television licence being granted at this time to motion picture theatre interests with all the implications of such action, and to a corporation controlled by nonCanadian interests; 2. The extremely high costs, capital and operating of reasonably good television service; 3. The need, within the shortest possible time after television starts, of network connections between Canadian centres. If the CBC would butt out of the television field, Famous Players and the radio applicants, with the co-Operation of the CBC, would meet the costs and fill the needs. Famous Players has the Dumont system at its service and it has theatres in all cities in Canada. Its national scope would be of great value in spreading television. The television situation is so complicated that there is talk of a Royal Commission being established in an endeavor to recognize the rights of all parties. OW that the television battle is on, with the CBC in control and radio trying to keep the movies out, we would like to recall some of our past stories on the subject. This paper urged a long time ago that Canadian exhibitors get together and prepare for eventualities. On December 13th, 1944, we front-paged a story headed: “Will Show Television Come Under CBC?” On December 27th we bannerlined: “Asleep At Television Switch?” and began the story with “There is a dangerous lack of interest in television post-war problems on the part of the Canadian motion picture industry, which has not seen fit to become a contributing sponsor of the recently-organized Canadian Radio Technical Planning Board.” On July 2nd, 1947, we headed another yarn: “Says Trade Dozes at Video Switch.” We wrote quite a few things like that but the trade went sleepily on. One general manager told me that there was nothing to worry about and one of our leading engineers insisted that the CBC would never try to extend its authority to theatres. What’ll you bet now, boys? But now a new problem is related to domination of television by the CBC. The Zenith radio people and the American telephone monopoly have reached an agreement whereby television will reach the home through telephone wires, a device called Phonevision making this possible. This system will begin when enough sets have been sold to make practicable a subscription scheme, in which the householder will find a television charge on his monthly phone bill. It is hard to consider that the CBC will be able to ban this from Canada if it turns out to be a success in the USA. Will the CBC’s authority over television be sustained when it conflicts with Canada’s telephone interulcers, behind the same desks.” ests, a legal monopoly? Both the CBC and telephone company are responsible to the Board of Transportation Commissioners. That body will probably stop the CBC from interfering with the telephone company’s logical use of its wires. Television seems to be crossing so many industry borders that the movies won’t be alone in questioning the limits of the CBC’s authority, which began with radio and has now intruded into other fields. OHN Houseman, writing in the New York Star about Hollywood’s predicament, made these interesting observations: “Ours is a culture upon which mechanical novelty exercises an instinctive and irresistible fascination. Often the fact of its newness is more potent than the results it achieves. None would deny that talking pictures, for instance, in their early days were by all artistic and technical standards infinitely inferior to the silent pictures which they supplanted—yet their victory was inevitable. “The best in Television today is in almost every respect inferior to the worst in Movies. Yet by its sheer technical novelty, it is already making serious inroads into movie attendance in the few markets where the two media are competing. And this is only the beginning. “Does that mean that the sitwation is hopeless? That Hollywood is through? It does not. For what IS Hollywood, but the sum of its human parts? The Businessmen, on the one hand— the Creative elements on the other. . .. For the latter, once the transition is made, prospects were never brighter. Whether live or on film—simultaneously projected via coaxial cable or cover individual stations at different times, viewed intimately on home-sets or publicly on the giant screens of movie theatres —it is still product, and human brains and beauty and skill are needed to make it. As to the Businessmen, I think we need not worry too much about them, either. .. . I have a hunch that when the smoke clears they will be found, East and West, sitting in the same offices, with the same GEES RI IE iN iN Compliments x of the Season! NN iN Benjamin Pape j; \) & Co. Chartered Accountants rN rN Federal Bldg., NY r J Toronto ‘ \ LEE 5)