Television digest with electronic reports (Jan-Dec 1954)

4 gardless of agreements — and only in very rare instances does sponsor want two stations in same area to carry his program. Comments may be filed vintil May 3. Famous Spartanburg site-move case is over (Vol. 10:11). WSPA-TV (formerly WORD-TV), Spartanburg (Ch. 7), had obtained permission from FCC to operate temporarily at Paris Mt. , nearer Greenville and Anderson than Spartanburg. Uhf grantees in area protested to FCC and lost even though Sen. Johnson championed their cause. But WAIM-TV, Anderson, and WGVL, Greenville, wouldn't give up; they appealed to courts, this week obtained ruling which, in effect, won case for them. Court issued a stay order preventing WSPA-TV from starting at Paris Mt. pending hearing on merits of whole case. WSPA-TV then conceded fight was over by telling FCC it would build at original Hogback Mt. site. The stay order, it said, frustrated whole purpose of temporary site — fast service to area — because of inherent legal delays. FCC set April 50 for start of CBS-Zenith hearing on Ch. 2, Chicago, turning down Zenith's argument that it really should be competing with original licensee Balaban & Katz Corp. rather than with CBS, now operating WBBM-TV on the channel. Other hearings scheduled to start April 30; Odessa, Tex., Ch. 7; Minneapolis, Ch. 9; Pittsburgh, Ch. 11; Klamath Falls, Ore., Ch. 2; Hatfield, Ind. , Ch. 9. COLOR STATUS-PRICE, PROGRAMS. PICTURE SIZE; Color symposium for set manufacturers, conducted by RCA in Bloomington last week (Vol. 10:13), appears to have impressed set makers with RCA's intentions about color — but if any manufacturers have been stimulated into speeding up their color plans they aren't saying so yet. Principal immediate effect has been to force Westinghouse to bring price of its set down from S1295 to $1110 — near RCA's $1000 figure for its initial 15-in. set, which is now moving out to the market — and to bring GE annovmcement that price of its set is $1000, with service policies same as RCA's (Vol. 10:13). GE says it has shipped to 15 distributors. Situation is so turbulent technically, in the opinion of many manufacturers,' that they can't afford to freeze designs and produce the 15-in. receivers now being built. One exasperated manufacturer expressed it this way: "There's an invention every 5 minutes. Not only our own, but others too." Planning to produce about 10,000 sets this year (half 15-in., half 19-in.), RCA has committed itself to a "$10,000,000 gamble" on being first with the most whenever market "breaks". Regarding new inventions, Philco remains mum about picture tube it's supposed to have developed, confirming and denying nothing. Pres. Wm. Balderston, speaking before Newcomen Society in Philadelphia March 30, had only this to say: "The real bottleneck in this whole situation is the color picture tube... What is needed is a vastly simplified color tube [and] I am utterly confident that a simplified color tube, adaptable to mass production techniques, will be developed by electronic science in the foreseeable future." It will be 2-3 years, Mr. Balderston said, "before anything approaching mass production can be achieved." CBS pres. Frank Stanton, after long silence about color, gave his evaluation in talk to Investment Bankers Assn, in Chicago March 31. He said that CBS-Hytron will have "large numbers" of 19-in. color tubes commercially available in second half of this year ; that new Kalamazoo plant nearing completion will double company ' s tube production capacity. He called tube "CBS-Colortron 205," meaning 205 sq. in. More and better large color tubes, Mr. Stanton said, "will get the production of color sets off dead center and initiate the process of consumer acceptance and cost reduction that will rapidly lead toward mass output." Of future of color, he had little doubt, saying: "This field will certainly be very large. The qualitative superiority of color programming is such that just about every TV family will want to have a color TV set. This means that in the course of the next 7 or 8 years something like 50 to 40 million color sets may be sold at prices considerably higher than those that have ruled in black-&-white. " i