Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

SPEEDY, COMPACT MOBILE UNITS, RUSHED TO SCENES OF ACTION, WILL COVER EMERGENCIES AND SPECIAL NEWS EVENTS FOR THE POST-WAR TELEVISION STATION. SIGNALS WILL BE FLASHED BACK TO THE MAIN STUDIO BY MICROWAVE TRANSMISSION. of the service to the public. Television is willing to pay a fair price for contributed services dur- ing the present developmental stage but if supporting costs are lifted so high that resources are threatened, the industry will face a critical situation. There must be fair play and generous treatment by all con- cerned if television is to become a national medium of entertainment with consequent opportunities for mass employment. Sees 400 Cities With Telerision Last October in testimony before the Federal Communications Com- mission I stated that I believed television stations could be sup- ported in towns having populations as low as 25,000. I submitted cost and operations statements to sup- port my contention. I can now ex- pand that statement to say that it is my belief that within ten years more than 400 cities in the United States will have television stations, all operating at a profit. Unfortunately, sound broadcast- ers have been led to believe that the installation and operation of television facilities entail a very considerable outlay from the start. This is not so. Television program- ming can be started in a small way and expanded as receiving .sets and commercial sponsors increase. How this can be done is suggested in the illustration on page 3. It will be seen that one operator, handling cameras and lights by remote con- trol, would be sufficient for simple productions. By restricting their movements to the areas outlined, the actors would always be within the focus of the camera. The latter, once adjusted, would then operate unattended throughout the per- formance, eliminating need for an operator at each camera. If the announcer is to be visual, he would merely move from the position shown into the inner or outer stag- ing areas as called for. A studio arrangement such as the one shown, supplemented by one or two 16-millimeter motion picture projectors, would comprise all es- sential equipment for a start. As program time is increased and additional studio space secured, the transition from these limited facili- ties to those that will be required eventually could be carried out in gradual and logical steps. Now what about the other adver- tising media — newspapers, maga- zines, car-cards, billboards, direct mail and so on? I predict that all of these media, including sound broadcasting, will be more prosper- ous than ever, even after television becomes a commonplace. It has been the history of advertising that no new form ever completely displaces the older ones. On the contrary, history reveals that the resulting increased volume of advertising in- creases the distribution of goods and services so that the overall na- tional wealth is increased. Between 1927 and 1943, for exam- ple, newspaper circulation increased from 63,000,000 to 82,000,000 and magazine circulation mounted from 36,000,000 to 63,000,000. This was the period during which broadcast- ing was growing most rapidly. There is no fundamental reason why this experience should not be repeated with television even though television should prove to be the most powerful advertising medium devised by man. Cannot Copy Older Media Television programs cannot sim- ply ape the older forms of enter- tainment if they are to fulfill their promise. Although the scope of pro- gram material available to televi- sion broadcasters will be fully as great as that now available to sound broadcasters, the technique of pres- entation must be different since the television broadcaster will be pre- senting pictures themselves — not just sounds which create mental pictures. The technique of the stage will not be suitable since television will use the world for its stage and the usual fifty- by a hundred-foot space behind the footlights will be only a small fraction of its area of activities. Nor can it be the tech- nique of the movies, because tele- vision will broadcast events as they happen. Furthermore, there can be no takes and retakes which, after the final cutting, may lie in cans for months before they are released. No; television's technique must be different from any entertainment technique yet developed. No one questions that television techniques will improve as time goes on, but that improvement will be made for six-megacycle televi- sion as well as for eighteen- and twenty-megacycle television. We don't know how long it will take to develop twenty-megacycle televi- sion. We do know that we can plan post-war television on the six- megacycle basis and every rule of common sense tells us that we should go ahead on that basis. [ 4 RADIO AGE]