Radio Broadcast (May 1928-Apr 1929)

OCTOBER, 1928 HERE AND THERE 339 HOW IT S DONE IN JAPAN Nipponese broadcasters use Western apparatus (in this case a Marconi 10-kilowatt transmitter), but they manage to create the atmosphere of a Japanese print even in so mechanistic a background as this. The photograph shows the modulator and amplifier panels of Station JOBK at Osaka, one of Japan s leading broadcasting stations. or direct advertising. Picture broadcasting is a general service of pictures into the home. For the present, this is a service principally to experimenters and pioneers — the same class which initiated the broadcast boom in 1920 — and it is unfair to pass special regulations restricting the service to that growing group. However, in one sense, the desired objective of the Commission to restrict picture signals to hours such that the public, seeking musical entertainment, shall not be too frequently disturbed by picture signals, has already been attained. Ninety per cent, of all picture transmissions take place during daylight hours when the stations involved have heretofore been customarily silent. No program director is prepared to force picture signals upon an audience predominately interested in tone reception, especially between the hours of eight and eleven in the evening, and the maximum weekly schedule of the stations now broadcasting pictures through out the United States involves less than twenty minutes of actual picture signal per week. This is certainly not too great a concession to the experimenter who looks forward to the day that illustrated radio programs will be received in every broadcast listener's home. In spite of the doubtful validity of a regulation applying program restrictions, there is really no opposition to the Commission's proposed course in limiting the number of picture transmissions permissible. Here and There THE Army Air Corps, according to F. Trubee Davison, Assistant Secretary of War for Air, will install radio beacons at Mitchel Field, N. Y., San Francisco, Cal., San Antonio, Texas, Uniontown, Pa., Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, D. C. Experiments prove that the range of these beacons may be extended up to 2000 miles, if required. /^HIEF Radio Supervisor W. D. Terrell ^ has issued an order to amateur and experimental stations, effective October 1, that they use the intermediate "w," if located in continental United States, and "k," if in our territories or insular possessions, in accordance with the plan adopted by the International Radio Telegraph Convention. A STUDIO is being installed in the new administration building of the Board of Education of Pittsburgh, Pa., in order that educational programs may originate there for radiation by kdka. Practically every school in Pittsburgh has been equipped with a receiving set and, at specified times, lessons on a particular subject will be broadcast to all pupils of all schools of a certain grade. Educational work of this nature has been carried on in England for several years. More than 4000 schools in London and Daventry are equipped to receive programs radiated through the British Broadcasting network. Another experiment along educational lines was conducted for a period of six weeks last season by weei of Boston, and will soon be resumed on a more elaborate scale. From one to one-thirty o'clock on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the students of the S. A. Day Junior High School of Newtonville held classes in the assembly hall before the loud speaker. The success of the project was so marked that many schools were equipped with radio receivers during the summer. The subjects taught last season were French, poetry, music, science, history, and geology. /CONTRIBUTIONS ranging from fifty cents to two dollars were received by Tex Rickard as expressions of thanks from members of the radio audience for making possible the broadcasting of the Tunney-Heeney fight. Rickard, upon receipt of these donations, expressed the opinion that they were evidence that the broadcasting companies have been receiving something good for practically nothing for a long time. His contract with the N. B. C. soon expires and the probabilities are that Rickard's peace conferences will not be broadcast for some time to come. Eventually, however, a commercial sponsor will probably be found for them. THE Columbia Broadcasting System has concluded arrangements with Station wabc, operated for some years by A. H. Grebe & Company, to become its alternate New York key station on the evenings that wor is not available. Columbia chain programs have thereby become nightly affairs, wor has also relinquished Sunday afternoons and evenings in favor of WABC. A DVERTISERS are spending from ten to twelve million dollars yearly in presenting good will programs through radio, according to Frank A. Arnold of the National Broadcasting Company. This, it seems to us, is greatly underestimated, since it does not take into account the money spent on local stations for advertising announcements. THE number of stations deleted from the list of broadcasters as a direct result of the notification to show cause, served on 164 stations, amounted to but 36. All but 57 of the cited stations appeared at the hearings with witnesses and affidavits, and 21 stations filed affidavits by mail. /CAPTAIN S. C. HOOPER has been made Director of Naval Communications to succeed Rear Admiral Craven, who has been made commandant of the naval training station at Great Lakes, HI. Captain Hooper has been temporarily assigned to the Federal Radio Commission as short-wave expert. A LIST of frequency assignments for special services on short waves was announced by Captain Hooper, just prior to his appointment as Director of Naval Communications. Six channels were reserved for communication between airplane and ground stations; five channels for communication between ships, ship-to-ship and coastal stations by radio telephony; one channel for police departments; three marine calling frequencies; two groups of frequencies comprising eleven channels for experimental purposes; five for geo-physical purposes; six for railway communication between engine and caboose; four for scientific expeditions and yachts, in addition to their usual calling frequencies; three for portable stations and twenty for power line control. This latter generous allocation should certainly satisfy the power companies. A PPEARING before the Federal Radio Com** mission on May 14, 1928, to request a great number of 100-kilocycle width channels for television purposes, Dr. Alfred N. Goldsmith of the Radio Corporation of America stated: " Radio television is at a stage where it is prepared to leave the seclusion of the research laboratory and to enter into the daily affairs and uses of men. Intensive development work of an experimental nature has already been carried on and transmission of television material is at hand through confidential experiments and transmissions carried on at Schenectady, Pittsburgh, and New York. In other words, television is not a vague and remote project, but, while still experimental, is an imminent and plausible possibility." After pointing out that uninformed television broadcasters would transmit an endless series o\ unsatisfactory pictures which would benefit only oculists in the proportion that they would ruin the eyesight of the public, Dr. Goldsmith continued: "In the interests of saving both the