Television digest and FM reports (Feb-Dec 1947)

naana codel’s AUTHORITATIVE NEWS SERVICE OF THE VISUAL BROACCASTIN5 AND FREQUENCY MODULATION A”TS AND INDUSTRY 'pyBUSHED^EEKlY BY ff RADIO NEWS BIIB£A9f 1519 COHMESTICOY AVL H.W., WASHINGTON G.B.C. TELEPHONE MICHSSAH 2020 • VOL. 3, HO, 18 May 3, 1947 AM 'FREEZE' ENDS, 1,712 STATIONS: This week, FCC wound up all of its Line 2 AM cases (those involving complex engineering). In addition, it completed disposal of some 200 of its 350 .Line 1 cases (relatively simple applications). Thus, end of Feb. 7 May 1 "freeze” period found United States and its possessions with 1,712 licensed or authorized AM broadcasting stations — nearly 200 more than our 1,520 count of Jan. 1, 1947 and an approximate 70% increase since the official 1,004 count of , Jan. 1, 1946. This crowded week alone, hell-bent to catch up. Commission granted 57 CPs for new AM stations, 45 changes in facilities, set scores of cases for hearing. Our new AM Directory, dated May 1, thus goes to the printer this week (will be mailed to you in about 7 days) with all these grants included, listing all stations in North America by states and frequencies, all still pending U.S. applications by states and frequencies. Our log of 1,712 U.S. stations compares with 1,561 in the last directory printed in the trade. It also includes the 128 stations in Canada, 240 in Mexico, 87 iin Cuba, and those' in Newfoundland, The Bahamas, Bermuda, Haiti, Dominican Republic. Pleased as punch over meeting deadline, breaking up log-jam. Chairman Denny said broadcast routinei should be normal henceforth, foresaw few actions next week as Commission prepared for May 15 opening of International Telecommunications Conference at Atlantic City. Only fly in ointment is plethora of hearings yet to come. These Spell additional complications as doors open for new applications, amendments, petitions for reconsideration. But biggest enigma among broadcasting fraternity — whose older timers view with manifest but helpless alarm the huge increase in stations, crowding of wavelengths, advent of new competition — is just how much more traffic the standard band can bear. TV READY FOB THE THEATER, TOO: Watching t elevision images being projected onto, a small theater-size screen — and in color, at that — one cannot refrain from reflecting on what must be the state of mind prevailing among the higher levels of the motion picture industry, executive and financial. Whether it's smug complacence, lack of comprehension, preoccupation with other problems, or simply a rejection of what they’d prefer not to see and hear, they seem to have a blind spot for TV. Even their technicians, aware as some of them are to TV’s potential (Vol. 3, No. 17), apparently are only whispering in the wilderness. For theater ;TV, let alone home TV, plainly forecasts another revolutionary "threat" to the movies. Anyone who saw RCA'S demonstrations this week at Franklin Institute in Philadelphia could see that. What we saw RCA scientists disclose there, color TV on a 10x7% foot theater screen, was not very important per se — it’s too far in advance of itself by RCA’s own admission. Indeed, color TV for theaters isn’t any nearer than it is for the home, an issue settled by Federal fiat only a few weeks ago (Vol. 3, No. 12). The significance of the demonstration, to this observer at least, lay jin the fact that theater TV in black and white is ready — and in Gen. Sarnoff’s assertion Copyright 1947 by Radio News Bureau