Television digest and FM reports (Jan-Dec 1946)

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HflailM DODEl’s ? AUTHORITATiVc NEWS SERVICE OF TH-r: VISUAL BROADCASTING AND FREQUENCY MODULATION arts and industry anil all Rgports m\.\m WEEKLY BY g RADIO feS mUl 1513 CCJil^ECTlCUT AYL H.!l.’i3ASa!^9T0?i S, D.6. TEEPhONE MICHISAN 2020 ‘VOL 2, fiO. 5 February 2, 1946 CAHTOO}! WITH A POIJJT: You may get a bang, too, out of Lichty's pointed TV cartoon carried in Chicago Times Syndicate newspapers, so we've secured permission to reproduce it and enclose a copy. We have a small supply left, and will be glad to send you extra copies with our compliments. POLYCSIHOMi: PLSASSS PB2SS: Given a choice, there is little doubt that the public would choose color television as against black-and-white. And CBS's polychrome images, as finally shown to the press in New York this week, are every bit as good as promised. In fact, they were magnificent ; better, even, than Technicolor movies. But — is it ready for the public, as monochrome admittedly is? Demonstrated under idealized conditions, is it near enough to practicality to be worth v/aiting for? CBS spokesmen admit it isn't ready yet, but say it v/ill be within a year if whole industry gets behind it, or nearly as quickly as they think black-andv/hite transmitters can be delivered. Hence, they insist, we should wait for it rather than invest huge sums in broadcast and receiving apparatus that will inevitably be rendered obsolete because it cannot be interchanged with or reconverted to uhf operation. The FCC, final arbiter, only now beginning to take field measurements on CBS's lone uhf transmissions, has given monochrome on the lower frequencies the go-ahead, thus indicating its official policy against further waiting. And among the experts, there is no consensus on the timing question, very f ew-agreeing yet with Columbia's zealous young executives and researchers on their estimate of only another year for practical color TV. Indeed, even some of the men who worked on CBS's custom-built color apparatus, while certain that TV's ultimate must be color on the uhf, estimate anywhere from 2-3 years before it is engineeringly if not economically feasible. Others go along. with rival RCA-NBC's estimate of at least 5 years (Vol. 1, No. 16). So they urge, either publicly or privately, that those willing to spend the huge sums needed for TV, as perfected to now, should not be restrained from doing so. Nor do they go along with the CBS thesis that today's black-and-white, which is comparable to professional home movies, is so vastly inferior that everything should be halted to wait for color. CBS's color, as demonstrated, looked better than the color shown by RCA at its recent Princeton show, which RCA says isn't commercially practicable yet. . But its black-and-white wasn't nearly as good. Perhaps there was method in the contrasts shown by CBS, perhaps it's only one observer's impression. CBS ran off a 16mm film which was virtually a "TV commercial," showing subjects like models, merchandise and news events first in monochrome, then in color — v/omen's gowns, shoes, tapestries, household settings, football games, horse races. If commercial TV, when it comes of age, is as well handled as this Copyright 1946 by Radio News Bureau