Television digest and FM reports (Sept-Dec 1945)

BSFFIHG TH2IR UHIFOBMS: As indicated in our Sept. 8 issue, more consulting engi neers, attorneys, badly needed, are coming out of war service and entering Washington field. Latest addition to engineering firms: Weldon & Carr, 1605 Connecticut Ave., formed by James 0. V/eldon, former OWI communications chief, builder of many high power stations here and abroad, and Lester H. Carr, formerly with CBS, recently doing war work for Navy.... Out of Navy and back in Washington consulting engineering practice soon v;ill be Comdr. Joseph A. Chambers, latterly head of Special Weapons Division and before that chief of Navy's radar ... .Already mustered out and back with WGN as chief engineer is veteran Lt . Comdr. Carl Meyers. ... Comdr . Robert M. Booth, lawyer-engineer who headed Navy's aero-radio and radar at Philadelphia, goes out of uniform Nov. 1 and joins Kremer & Bingham, Washington attorneys, v/hich Lt. Comdr. William A. Porter joined this v/eek....Lt. Comdr. Ralph Clark, of Ring & Clark, consulting engineers, expects to be out about Jan. l....Dr. Frank G. Rear doffs Navy uniform Oct 1, his partner Bob Kennedy a fev; weeks later, and they're continuing in harness as Rear & Kennedy, consulting engineers .... Comdr . ?iillard M. Garrison, formerly Jansky & Bailey, expects to be out in November. .. .And due back momentarily from his AMG post in Germany is Capt. Arthur' Scharfeld, Loucks & Scharfeld, who may get his discharge soon. VLaSHI}?aTOH GADFLY: Don't sell FCC Commissioner Clifford J. Durr short simply because he's been painted as a starry-eyed reformer in some quarters. You may not agree v;ith him, may not like some of things he does and says, but he's a man of character, integrity and brains. One-time Rhodes scholar, brother-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, he's the FCC's chief dissenter, believes in "progress by protest," has a considerable following within Commission, in Government and on Capitol Hill, won more kudos than otherwise by his keen dissent in the Avco-V/LW case. You can't dismiss him as "just another New Dealer," v/hether or not he rubs you wrong with such speeches as he made last week before New York's Christ Church Forum wherein he (like Chairman Paul Porter) took a stand, against overcommercialism, concentration of control, etc. V/e ourselves, for example, can't go along v/ith his bearishness on FM as a potential source of improvement. As we see it, FM will bring more stations, more specialized stations, more competition, v/ider choice of programs — and in long run a survival of program fittest, with public the ultimate judge. LEWS AND VIEWS: Facilities of old General Television Corp. in Boston, which once held license for now deleted WIXG in mechanical scanning days, have been leased by Twentieth Century-Fox, and obsolescent equipment has been reconditioned by GE. With applications already filed with FCC for commercial TV outlets in New York and Hollywood, Twentieth Century presumably will also apply for Boston.... In East contacting electronic organizations, former Senator C. C. Dill, co-author of the Communications Act of 1934, now a member of the Columbia Basin Commission in his native State of Washington, reports that television is included in plans for a V/ashington State Building at site of Grand Coulee Dam. Plan is to entertain tourists in big aluminum-covered building with high tower overlooking Roosevelt Lake above the dam.... Home from his psychological warfare job in the ETC, Col. Bill Paley , who has been vacationing in Colorado Springs, should be back at CBS helm shortly. ... Series of 9 articles on audience reactions to TV programs, written by Oscar Katz and Ei’nest Dichter of CBS Research Dept, for Tide Magazine, has been reprinted in booklet form by CBS and is available on request. . . .Philadelphia Inquirer's $1,900,000 purchase of WFIL and WFIL-FM from Lit Bros. Dept. Store may herald FCC's new open-to-all-bidders policy on station sales (Sept. 8 issue) in view of Commission's newly cautious attitude on transfers.