Radio Broadcast (May 1927-Apr 1928)

JANUARY, 1928 ACTIVITIES OF THE RADIO COMMISSION 199 The industry is headed for one of the most dangerous shoals in its career. Doubtless, it will weather it successfully. But how long the shoal will impede its progress depends upon how successful it is in placing the ship in the hands of one pilot, instead of two squabbling deck hands, to guide it past the patent whirlpool. It will require leadership of the highest order to establish a patent pool. In the future, there will be a new and greater industry, much greater than we imagine to-day. The radio receiver is but a nucleus of a home entertainment device which will rival the automobile in usefulness and entertainment value and, in the end, its gross sales figures will be as large as those of the envied motor car industry. The radio receiver, the phonograph, the motion picture machine and the television receiver will, some day, be available in a single, compact, home-entertainment device. The public will pay as much for a versatile means of home entertainment as for an automobile to take them away from home. The more the leaders of the radio industry concentrate upon the development of radio and the establishment of its true market, the sooner they will have a five-billion-dollar industry. At present, the most vital aid in that objective would be turning over radio's patent problems to a patent pool. The alternatives are continued squabbles, continued patent fights, and a radio market still limited to about ten per cent, of the American public. The Commission Announces a New Policy THE Federal Radio Commission recently announced a long list of allocation changes which have been made with the purpose of improving the channels of a few of the leading stations of the country. The Commission it is rumored, will hereafter work on the theory that there are a few leading, national stations, which are the favorites of listeners all over the country and therefore deserve clear channels, entirely free of interference to the limit of their range. This is the basis upon which several years ago Secretary of Commerce Hoover worked out the plan of Class A and Class B broadcasting stations and urged on the commission in these columns for more than a year. Following this plan, whaz, which shared time with wgy, was shifted to share time with wmak, giving powerful and popular wgy a full channel, wjar, Providence, was shifted from 620 kc. to 800, eliminating widespread heterodyning with weaf, ten kc. off, experienced throughout southern New England, weei, Boston, was shifted from 670 to 650 kc, avoiding a heterodyne imposed upon it by a Chicago station, wtrl, a little station in Tilton, New Hampshire, formerly occupying a channel adjacent to wjz, was shifted downward in order to eliminate a whistle which it thrust on wjz's carrier in large parts of New England. wdwm of Asbury Park, New Jersey, was shifted so as to eliminate conflict with wsai's carrier, wnac of Boston and wean of Providence, Columbia chain members, were made channel-sharing stations, probably in the interests of better management, and moved quite far into the unpopular higher frequency region, wcau, a Philadelphia advertising station and now a member of the Columbia network and wkrc of the same chain were demoted from the lower frequency region, wor now has wos of Jefferson City, Missouri, as a channel neighbor instead of wsui, Iowa City. We believe the Missouri station is more powerfully received in Newark and will therefore accentuate slightly the whistle which already mars wor's programs. Another station to benefit by the Commission's reallocation is ksd, St. Louis, which is given full time, ksd is one of the pioneers of broadcasting and is deserving of the consideration which the Commission has shown. The conclusion that N. B. C. stations have fared better than Columbia chain stations is inescapable, but it must not be forgotten that the former do include most of the pioneer stations of the country which have served faithfully and well for years, while most of the latter have not yet won their spurs in public estimation. Clearing the channels of the N. B. C.'s leading stations cannot be criticized, but it might have been better policy to have concentrated less on Columbia stations when the demoting process was begun. The Commission Suggests Synchronization Schemes IN A speech before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Commissioner O. H. Caldwell made some remarks about the problems of maintaining a broadcasting station on its assigned frequency. He mentioned three methods of accomplishing this purpose, one well known and widely used, one successfully used experimentally but economically prohibitive, and a third which is a rather unfortunate suggestion. It is the Commissioner's idea that, if complete frequency stability could be secured and the heterodyne interference between stations now assigned to the same channels eliminated, more stations could safely occupy the same channel. While this is true, it must be realized that the audiofrequency components of two stations on the same channel also affect each other. When the distant station does not come in with sufficient volume to cause cross talk, it often causes irregular distortion. Cyrstal control, the first method suggested for synchronizing carriers, is not sufficiently stable to solve the problem. Temperature and humidity changes affect the frequency of the crystal and, consequently, it does not give the absolute regulation necessary for successful occupancy of the same channel by two broadcasting stations whose carrier ranges overlap. The second method suggested, the use of a wire circuit for the transmission of a con A WIRELESS STATION IN I904 A 35-kw. spark transmitter was erected by the old De Forest Company for the Navy near San Juan, Porto Rico. The illustration shows the receiving installation with Mr. Irodell, operator for the De Forest Company using the receiving equipment which consisted of a "pancake" tuner and an electrolytic detector. It was not until 1906 that a carborundum detector was substituted for the electrolytic one. The call signal of this station, which may be recalled by old-timers, was sa.