Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1951)

for a hair-do every day aR day more women use HOLD-BOB bobby pins than all other brands combined SET CURLS EASIER HOLD HAIRDOS BETTER for NEW hair-do glamour wear the NEW, modern Permanized RunResistant GaMfta HAIR NETS © l»5l e*riORD PKODUCTS, INCOBPORATtO, Chicago, lit HISTORY IS MADE Separated from the flames by the Chicago River, a crowd watches the blaze in which four firemen were killed. Opposite, a fireboat on the river pours water into the flaming warehouse. Quick-acting Chicago telecasters caught these scenes for millions of American viewers. It's taken for granted now, this miracle of television. We who live within reach of the towering bat wings antennas complacently expect we can flick a switch and have delivered into our living rooms a choice of plays, comedy, news and education. It's like telephones, electric refrigerators, gas stoves and all the other everyday marvels of the Twentieth , Century. Yet television, the nearest to human of all mechanical means of communication, still retains its ability to jolt us back into a new comprehension of its original miracle. There are times we can't escape the comprehension that television, to most intents and purposes, enables us to be two places simultaneously. Such comprehension came again on January 12, 1951, when for the first time, networks cut into their regular scheduled programs to show a man-killing fire raging in Chicago. An estimated five million viewers again were conscious of the drama of television itself as well as of the sight they were witnessing. There was nothing to herald the approach of an historic occasion. January 12 started out as just an ordinary day in which producers hassled about props, writers about scripts, actors about publicity and management about contracts. And then it happened. At 4:10 P.M., EST, NBC interrupted the Kate Smith Show with an announcement that they were cutting to Chicago, and in an instant, on TV screens, Kate's smiling face was replaced by the leaping flames and billowing smoke of a huge and raging fire. NBC held its scoop for only a few minutes. At 4:20, ABC had it, at 5:15, CBS was showing it, and at 8: 30 DuMont with a complete film story which began even before the first 5-11 alarms had been turned in. In seconds, viewers knew more about the fire than if they had read a million words, listened to the most eloquent of narrators, or even elbowed their way to the guard rail across the river from the blaze. There was just one thing the television coverage missed. No one said a word about the secondary drama which virtually every viewer wondered about — the drama which went on at the stations as the staff dropped its ordinary duties and rallied to put the fire on living room screens. No one was ready for it. Television stations everywhere have found it safer, surer, cheaper; to cover news with motion picture film rather than try to move remote units out for direct telecasts to where it was happening. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago had one spectacular break apiece in 1946 and 1947, but after that, such on-the-spot coverage was primarily the pipe dream of salesmen talking hard to sell seven-inch screen sets. Television settled down to ordinary, dependable day-to-day reporting. Yet even though no Chicago station was ready for it, everyone was prepared, for TV crews had dreamed of such a break. The fire occurred at LaSalle Street and the Chicago River, a spot in direct line of sight for three stations, and reachable by the fourth. AA