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

meet with full public acceptance and approval and it will enable the Commission and the industry to keep faith with the five or six mil- lion present owners of black-and- white receivers." Reveals RCA Plans General Sarnoff outlined in some detail the plans RCA would follow under any one of five different de- cisions the FCC mijrht make in set- tling- the color television question. "If the Commission were to adopt the CBS proposal only," he declared, "we would be confronted with a field-sequential color system which gives a "degraded picture and is non-compatible. We would then find ourselves saddled with a sys- tem which we firmly believe is in- adequate and inferior and which we seriously doubt would prove accept- able to the public." Under these hypothetical circum- stances, he said, RCA would act as follows: 1. We would make and sell transmitting equipment, on or- der, to anyone. 2. We would make and sell tubes, including our tri-color kinescopes, and parts, to anyone. 3. We would make and sell field - sequential color receivers, utilizing the tri-color tube, as the public demand for such receivers might exist. 4. We would make and sell tri- color tube converters on the same basis. 5. We would make and sell separate adapter units for tele- vision sets already in the hands of the public, as well as for new sets thereafter manufactured." Cost of Adapldtiuii tstiitiatcd "Building adapters into our sets at the factory presents an entirely different problem," General Sarnoff said. "This, we do not plan to do. It has been estimated that the pres- ent annual production of television receiving sets is at the rate of five million a year. With an estimated minimal figure of S20 for built-in automatic adapters, the public would have to pay more than $100,- 000,000 a year for an adaptation to a degraded system which is non- ccmpatible. "We do not believe that the pub- lic will want adaptation to a de- graded CBS picture at this or at any other price. Xor do we believe that the public should be forced to pay this tax of $100,000,000 a year in order to receive the CBS de- graded picture. Public Reactions Will Guide "If we are wrong, the public will prove us wrong. In all these plans we would necessarily be guided by public reactions and competitive conditions. We would have to modify or adjust our plans in ac- cordance with such reactions and conditions. And we w-ill have to make receivers with adapters, if future experience proves that this is what the public wants." General Sarnoff said that RCA stands on its record of "energeti- cally developing" those things in which it has confidence. "On the other hand," he continued. "I do not assume that we would be ex- pected to be in the vanguard of pro- moting any system in which we have no confidence and which we believe is inferior and unsound; a -system whose length of life com- mercially is open to serious ques- tion." He told the Commission that he thought he had detected some inti- mation in the record that, unless all manufacturers were willing now to commit themselves to full scale manufacture of a system that is "inferior and not in the public in- terest," then any decision the Com- mission might make in favor of the CBS system, "might in some way be frustrated." General Sarnoff pointed out that if the Commission were to adopt "the best" system, "then no one in our competitive and free enterprise economy of today is going to be able to keep the public from getting it—if it really is "the be.st.' Conse- quently, any inference that an ad- vance commitment by manufac- turers, or even compulsion, might be necessary to ensure that the public will be able to buy that which has been assumed to be 'the best' is unrealistic. . . . The best will sell itself on its own merits. Competition will see to that. "Of course we do not think the Columbia proposal is "the best." If it were the best, the Commission would not be faced with the need to get a commitment, or to apply force, to sell it. The need to apply force would come only from the op- posite premise — that Columbia's proposal could not be sold on its own merits. "Xow I wish to make it entirely clear," said General Sarnoff, "that in answering this hypothetical question I have not anticipated, and do not expect, that the Com- mission's decision will be to adopt standards based on the CBS system PLANT OF THE RADIO CORPORATION OF AMERICA AT LANCASTER, PA., WHERE THE NEW RCA TRI-COLOR KINESCOPES ARE BEING ASSEMBLED IN "PILOT RUNS". SOME OF THE IMPORTANT COMPONENTS OF THESE TUBES ARE BEING PRODUCED AT THE RCA PLANT IN HARRISON, N. ,T. [RADIO AGE 5]