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

Through a control room such as this will pour the news and pictures supplied by scores of reporters, com- mentators and cameramen working inside and outside Chicago's Amphitheatre. vention schedules and the scheduling of special pro- grams that cannot be predicted more than minutes in advance of their taking the air. To provide roving coverage NBC will concentrate four mobile units in Chicago. These include a new "crash" truck which is completely equipped to transmit live TV pictures or 16 mm. motion pictures direct from the 35-foot truck. The new "crash" truck, to be used for the first time at the conventions, was built to NBC specifications and will carry three RCA television cameras and several movie cameras. The mobile units will serve NBC's specially created "Human Interest Team", which will provide the audi- ence with feature material to brighten the political re- ports direct from the floor of the International Amphi- theatre. This team will consist of a staff of directors, writers and reporters whose sole job in Chicago will be to ferret out the side stories which will amuse as well as inform televiewers. This staff is already at work on a series of sixteen pre-convention telecasts which will give NBC viewers latest reports on the race for the Presidential nomination prior to the actual balloting in Chicago as well as a picture history of past political conventions. Meanwhile, NBC engineers have blue-printed the 7,500 square feet NBC convention headquarters in the North Wing of the Amphitheatre. The headquarters One of the mobile units, carrying TV cameras and film equipment, which will increase the political convention coverage that radio and television will provide the American people. 4 RADIO AGE will be completely air-conditioned and will contain two large television studios and three radio studios specially constructed by NBC for the conventions. A newsroom housing teletypes, switchboards, operations desks for both television and radio, and NBC's central news desk, will occupy 1,200 square feet. To the central desk will pour news from more than fifty reporters and commen- tators which then will be funneled to both radio and TV networks. NBC headquarters also will include dark rooms for movie and still picture developing, make-up rooms, staging facilities, dressing rooms, tape recording rooms, studios for NBC affiliate stations and an office for the sponsors of NBC's conventions coverage. Convention TV to be Sponsored Another "first" for the 1952 conventions is sponsor- ship. Negotiations were opened with the two national committees in August of 1951 for permission to sell NBC coverage to a commercial sponsor in order to help defray the huge expense. On January 2nd of this year, executive vice president James H. Carmine of the Philco Corp. and president Joseph H. McConnell of NBC agreed on preliminary details for sponsorship of NBC radio and TV coverage of the conventions. The convention hall was chosen by the national com- mittees this year to provide better facilities for television. However, even this decision will not make available enough space inside the hall itself for each network to install its own cameras. Therefore, the proceedings from the convention sessions will be "pooled" and fed to all networks. Each network will have its own commentator