Motion Picture Daily (Jul-Sep 1939)

8 Motion Picture Daily Wednesday, September 6, 1939 Biggest Year For Football On Air Seen For the fourth successive year, the Atlantic Refining Co. will sponsor play-by-play broadcasts of major college football games. The new schedule, now being completed, will set a record for the number of games to be broadcast, the number of colleges whose home schedules will be covered, and the number of radio stations which will broadcast the games. All told, 191 games will be broadcast over 74 stations. The program includes the home schedules of 27 colleges located along the Atlantic Coast from Massachusetts to Florida and as far west as Ohio. Counting the opponents of the colleges, the program includes games to be participated in by 108 colleges. Among the highlights of the schedule are the Penn-Navy and PennCornell games, the Pittsburgh-Carnegie Tech game ; the Duke-North Carolina contest ; the Florida-Georgia Tech and California-Georgia Tech games; and the Boston College-Holy Cross contest, and the ArmyYale game, which will be broadcast over a 26-station network.. Chicago Finds New Television System Chicago, Sept. 5. — A. new television system described by its inventors as removing the limitations of the cathode ray method, has been demonstrated here by W. G. MacCarthy and H. J. McCreary of the Chicago Television and Research Laboratories. The inventors state their device will provide reception at great distances and will project images on theatre-size screens. Present television reception is limited to a 50-mile radius of the transmission source. The new system has added value in that it does not require performers to work under the searing hot lights required of present television. The new method is based on development of a tube called the photomocell, an electrical optical device employing polarized light. Playwrights Lose Plagiarism Appeal The application of Edward Shelton and Margaret Ayer Barnes for reargument of the appeal to the Circuit Court of Appeals was denied by the court yesterday. Shelton and Miss Barnes sought to set aside the decision of the court, cutting an award of $532,000 against M-G-M to about one-fifth that amount, and holding that the defendants should not be compelled to pay over the entire net profits of the film "Letty Lynton," which was declared a plagiarism of a play of the plaintiffs. New Television Firm Radio Electronic Television Corp., a new company, has just been chartered in Delaware. The company is already manufacturing receiving sets, cathode ray tubes and other parts for television receivers, and shortly will build its own transmitter in the Metropolitan area. Banner Radio Lines -By JACK BANNER IT TAR INERTIA has gripped the networks. From now on— unless, of Yy course, the news is of startling importance — the frequent interruptions of regular programs to interject news of the conflict will be sharply curtailed. For the most part the news will be held up for the regular news periods. TransAtlantic broadcasts will be continued, but not with the frequency of the immediate past. Of course regular schedules will go by the board if the news from Europe is momentous. The networks could not be expected to hold the pace of the past fortnight. Not only would the financial and human drain be too much, but the news for the main part is now of a repetitious or a non-decisive character. "Hot" news, however, will be flashed immediately. THE FATE AWAITING German language programs may be foreseen in the action of WHOM, which has just cancelled a five-year-old program of German music, substituting a program of Polish music. Managers of the foreign language stations in and about New York inform us that they expect wholesale cancellations of sponsored recorded programs made in the German tongue. ANOTHER WAR IS BEING WAGED in Tin Pan Alley as publishing houses vie for the cash awards awaiting the first catchy war tune. Titles of these forthcoming martial tunes are as closely guarded as tactical battle secrets. W'NEW HAS JUST ORDERED its news analysts off the air and henceforth the station will hold itself to a policy of broadcasting the news, free of any commentaries. To insure a more rounded news coverage than it has had heretofore, WNEW has placed an order for Associated Press news to supplement International News Service, its only news medium to date. STATIONS HAVE PROVIDED their news commentators and analysts with Polish-English dictionaries to guide them in pronouncing such words as "Czenstockow," "Graudenz," "Przashysz," "Poznan-Lawica," "Skarzysko-Kamienna." MORE THEN EVER NOW, the Latin Americas are appreciative of the censor-free, propaganda-free news that our short-wave stations afford them. From the acting governor of Puerto Rico, to NBC, has just come a cable, congratulating the network on its "splendid service." The cablegram was signed by Governor Colon ; Dr. Jose M. Gallardo, Commissioner of Education ; Juan B. Huyke, president of the Civil Service Commission ; Juan B. Soto, Chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico ; and by a number of other high-ranking citizens of that country. ONE AMUSING INCIDENT occurred in connection with the extension of the broadcast schedule for war news. Arthur Deter, a Portugueselanguage announcer for NBC's short-wave station, once signed a note for a fellow student while studying medicine in a Brazilian university. Although Deter broadcasts under the name of Fernanda De Sa, the holder of the note recognized his voice over the air and notified Deter it had never been paid. Deter has just cabled $130. FCC Schedule of Hearings Washington, Sept. 5. — Construction permits for two new broadcasting stations have been asked of the Federal Communications Commission by the Port Broadcasting Co., planning a 710-kilocycle, 5,000-watt station at Houston, Tex., and the L. & M. Broadcasting Co., seeking a 1,210-kilocycle, 250-watt station at Ottumwa, la. Other requests filed with the commission included the applications of Stations KGDM, Stockton, Cal., for change of frequency from 1,100 to 1,530 kilocycles and extension of time from day to unlimited; KFJZ, Fort Worth, for increase of power from 1,000 to 5,000 watts; WBTH, Williamson, W. Va., for extension of time from day to unlimited and increase of power from 100 to 250 watts, and WWRL, Woodside, N. Y. ; WSAY, Rochester, N. Y. ; WJIM, Lansing. Mich; WJW, Akron, O. ; WOC, Davenport, la., and WDAN, Danville, 111., for increase of night power from 100 to 250 watts. The commission announced the ten tative assignments of Oct. 11 for hearings on the applications of Presque Isle Broadcasting Co. for a new 1,500-kilocycle station at Erie, Pa., with 100 watts night, 250 watts day, and Station WNBX, Springfield, Yt. ; for authority to move to Keene, N. H., and Oct. 25 for hearings on the applications of Stations WJBW, New Orleans, for extension of time from specified hours to unlimited, and WABI, Bangor Me., for change of frequency from 1,200 to 560 kilocycles and increase of power from 100 watts night, 250 watts day to 1,000 watts. Other hearing assignments : Sept. 7 : Applications of the Saginaw Broadcasting Co. for a 1,200kilocycle station at Saginaw, Mich., with 100 watts night, 250 watts day, and Harold F. Gross and Edmund C. Shields for a 950-kilocycle, 500-watt daytime station at Saginaw, Mich. Sept. 8: Application of Clarence H. Frey and Robert O. Greever for a L200-Kilocycle, 100-watt daytime station at Logan, W. Va. Stricter Guard On Broadcasts In U.S., Canada Washington, Sept. 5. — Orders by the United States government designed to make effective our neutrality may possibly include a call yon broadcasters to avoid all prog{ , partial in any way to any of tfife belligerent nations. Such programs will include not only addresses by individual speakers or news commentators, but any other type of presentation of a war or international nature. Officials of the F.C.C., War, Navy and other departments have been in conference during the past few weeks for the purpose of developing a program for control of broadcasting, in connection with the Administration's plan for cushioning the effects of the European war upon American economy. It is not anticipated that any thought will be given to the restriction of reception of short-wave programs from abroad. Broadcasts In Canada Now on Wartime Basis Montreal, Sept. 5. — Radio in Canada has gone on a wartime basis, with an announcement by Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that all radio bulletins and commentaries on the European situation originating in the United States were to be routed through its Toronto studios instead of piped direct to Montreal and other centers. One foreign broadcast received by a local private station from an American network was interrupted the other evening with an announcement, "We regret we are not authorized to carry this program." Independent stations in the Dominion have been informed by CBC that if they pick up any commentators on American networks they must first submit the name of the broadcaster and the nature of his subject to CBC. This is in effect a complete ban because there is no way of prophesying wjiat commentators like NBC's Baukhage and CBS' Kaltenborn will say. Legion Approves 13 Of 14 New Pictures National Legion of Decency for the current week has approved 13 of 14 new pictures reviewed, 10 for general patronage and three for adults, and classed one as objectionable in part. The new films and their classification follow. Class A-l, Unobjectionable for General Patronage — "The Angels Wash Their Faces," "Death Rides the Range," "Fighting Gringo," "Flight at Midnight," "In Old Monterey," "Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase," "Oklahoma Frontier," "The Perpetual Sacrifice," "The Television Spy," "The Under-Pup." Class A-2, Unobjectionable for Adults — "Blackmail," "Dust Be My Destiny," "The Witness Vanishes." Class B, Objec tionable in Part — "The Women." Stars in Lux Theatre Claudette Colbert and Cary Grant will be starred in "The Awful Truth" in the first of the new season's Lux "Radio Theatre" broadcasts, returning to CBS Sept. 11.