Television digest and FM reports (Feb-Dec 1947)

SEM3 PLANS CHEAP TV SET: Radio-alert Sears Roebuck plans leap into TV sales field this year, marketing a "startlingly low priced set" manufactured by Colonial Radio Corp. , subsidiary of big tube-making Sylvania Electric Products Inc. That’s all the dope we have yet, gleaned only from remarks by Sylvania’ s chairman Walter E. Poor in press conference Thursday at New York Bankers Club. Whether price will be under RCA'S §250 and §375 TV-only table model units, now dominating market, or Emerson’S projected low-boy TV-AM-FM console, to Sell for §350 (Vol. 3, No. 12), was not disclosed. But Buffalo plant of Colonial, even if not already in production, can be added to list of Score or more manufacturers (Vol. 3, No. 7) who advised us they will be in TV set production before end of this year. THE FM INTEBFIEENCE SITUATION: There’s a problem, to be sure, but certainly no "crisis" — and nobody's going to get hurt. That’s the consensus, as we gather it from those who ought to know something about FM's current interference problem (Vol. 5, No. 12). Cry havoc stories and comment in the trade press, taken up in a scare Story in Tuesday N.Y. Herald Tribune, are pretty generally discounted by the experts. FCC sources say: Some reallocation of FM frequncies will be necessary -that seems certain. But it won't be a radical revision of the allocation plan (Supplement No. 48). There will be no loss of FM channels to anyone now assigned, there is no thought of widening the FM band, and there’s definitely no jeopardy to 1 existing TV allocations. In sum, those with savvy about FM observe: FM is not perfect, but no system is perfect. Standards were set up largely from theoretical computations. Now that service is under way. Some standards may have to be revised in the lght of operating experience — coverage predictions, field intensity measurements, multipath reflections, tropospheric propagation, receiver characteristics. Consider, too, that AM is 25 years old, yet is still undergoing changes in standards, even now has 30 kc separation for same areas under study. Also that AM went through several radical reallocations. Also, that no matter how FM (or AM, for that matter) is allocated, there will always be somebody building receivers to such low specifications that interference will result, competition being what it is. We’ve interviewed dozens of experts to get the foregoing summation. A few direct quotes may be pertinent. Comr. Jett: "We don't feel there's any interference problem in FM that can't be solved in a very short time." Chief Engineer Adair: "The seriousness of the FM interference problem appears to have been greatly exaggerated. It's only one of the growing pains of a new Service. Reasonable cooperation between industry and FCC should make the solution not too difficult." Maj . Armstrong said problem is merely one of proper transmitter location and can be remedied by simple expedients, which he recounts in letter to Broadcasting Magazine (March 31). GE's Russ David, protesting talk about "transmitter drift," declared problem is "one that can be readily corrected by reallocating FM stations 3 or 4 channels apart.... the same number of stations could be accommodated except in the major centers of population where more channels may be required [although] proper physical location would go a long way toward solving the problem in big cities." Copyright 1947 by Radio News Bureau