Television digest and FM reports (Feb-Dec 1947)

by pressure of other business. Rival applicants are Bremer, Newark; ABC, (Bamberger, Debs Memorial, Daily News. As for remaining applications elsewhere, FCC is working on engineering aspects of Fort Industry's for Detroit, Southern Radio & Television's for Miami, Daily News for Philadelphia. It's our guess last-named won't be pushed. With St. Louis Post-Dispatch's KSD-TV on air with temporary equipment, Detroit News' WWDT about to start (Yol. 3, No. 7), Scripps-Howard Radio's WEWS, Cleveland, * announced this week it has leased two top floors (35,000 ft.) of old Women's City Club on East 13th St., has let studio contract to Austin Co., hopes to be first to get TV going in that city. KOBE m CHANNEL SHIFTS; FM channel-shuffling, which goes on constantly, can become an awful headache unless you keep track of changes as they're' ordered. Presuming you made the several dozen changes we reported a few weeks ago in Supplement No. 43-A, we suggest you enter this week's changes (as listed in Supplement No. 47-F herewith) in your Allocation List (Supplement No. 43). Later we'll recapitulate, and reissue the allocation tables in revised up-to-date form. Next act on FM regulatory stage comes Monday — oral arguments on multiple ownership and overlap. The dozen or more participants can naturally be expected to justify their overlapping coverage. While FCC is considering FM overlap, WADC, Akron, will charge it with inconsistency in permitting AM overlap between commonlyowned WGAR, Cleveland, and WJR, Detroit, in proposing to give WGAR 50 kw (Vol. 2, No. 47). Commission announced 12 CPs, 10 conditionals this .week, bringing CP count to 503, conditionals to 178 (Supplement No. 47-F). Note also new STAs taking air each week, and slow but steady influx of new FM applicants. CO ME3ACX GF THE KITS; Reminiscent of radio's early days, "make it yourself" ads are proclaiming advent of the TV kit. Latest is a §159 affair, with tube capable' of framing 5%x4% inch image, advertised the other day in New York Times by Transvision Inc., 383 North Ave. , New Rochelle, N.Y., subsidiary of Lectrovision Ijac., makers of cathode ray tubes. Gimbels offered same kit recently. In recent issue of Radio News, New York Technical Institute of (N.J. offered students chance to build own sets. Prewar, Meissner Mfg. Co., Chicago, put out TV kit. Engineers are inclined to smile dubiously at ad claims (simplicity of construction), calling attention to such things as delicacy of alignment. But kits may .become increasingly popular as TV captures public fancy, especially while sets continue scarce and expensive. We know only a few radiomen — some FCC and Naval Research Lab technicians, and Electronic Magazine's Don Fink — who have built their own TV sets. THE PUNDITS LOCK AT RADIO: Curiously enough, there's less carping criticism of journalism's favorite whipping boy, commercial radio, in the conservative N. Y. Herald Tribune than in radio-owning N. Y. Times (WQXR-WQXQ). Latter'S radio editor. Jack Gould, is constantly hammering away at radio's ills, has transformed even his Sunday page (which under ex-editor Orrin Dunlap was radio industry's Bible on basic trends and developments) into hyper-critical columning. Gould's forays into "Social consciousness" also include outside writing; in recent issue of Public Opinion Quarterly he' takes TV to task, saying: "Television represents right now more of a menace to American culture than it does a conceivable boon. ...[it] is not a new industry but rather an extension of the old one — radio." He repeats contention "radio's chain of command" goes back to ad agencies, decries product sponsorship being worked into TV productions, declares: "Television will only compound the innocuity of radio today." Without recognizing that TV, scarcely an industry as yet, is all outgo, little or no income, he charges it with "no serious discussion on standards of taste, no consideration of how much advertising copy can be tolerated, no appreciation of the