Television digest and FM reports (Feb-Dec 1947)

plus such stations (for both telecasting and relaying) as WBEN-TV, Buffalo ; WEWS, Cleveland; WLWT, Cincinnati; WTVT, Toledo; WWJ-TV, Detroit; WIMJ-TV, Milwaukee; KSTP-TV, St. Paul; KSD-TV, St. Louis — and such other stations as may be ready by next summer. Meeting is planned next week to get firm agreement on cooperation, costs, etc. Engineers seem agreed it can be done, and GE (which equipped ChicagoSouth Bend link) is being enlisted to set up Schenectady-Buf f alo relay point at its Electronics Park plant in Syracuse. TV ABES 0? BILL 0? HEALTH: Not many more than 200 attended TEA'S "Television Clinic" in New York's Waldorf -Astoria Wednesday, conducted in lieu of a convention. But you got the feeling that this little handful of men, including many who make the wheels of this still numerically tiny industry go round, were on top of Something Big — and knew it and wanted the world to know it. Pervading the scene w as the same sober intensity of conviction and zeal and ambition that marked the pioneer days of radio broadcasting and manufacturing not so many years ago. Out of the mill-run speeches, technical papers, how-we-do-it stories, etc., that occupied the sessions (TBA's Secretary Will Baltin will have texts available soon), these struck us as the most significant things said or done at the meetings: (a) Big-time advertiser American Tobacco Co. (Lucky Strike), through its executive v.p. Paul M. Hahn, let it be known it's in TV to stay’, has major time-buying plans, wants "to grow with your medium." Indeed, its marketing planners are all excited about their own survey finding of 80-88% sponsor identification during recent football telecasts. Survey also showed, said Mr. Hahn, average Saturday college game telecast reached 42.5% of all set owners, 6.5 persons per set (not even counting bars or taverns). Mr. Hahn's fulsome kudos was echoed by Ford Motor Co.'s Ben R. Donaldson, who promised "TV has a Ford in its future," asserted Ford's current sports sponsorship is designed not only to gain valuable time and sports franchises but to learn technique and "to back up your great new industry." ( b ) WBXB's Capt. Bill Eddy disclosed plan for one of those "cluster" TV networks ex-FCC Chairman Denny envisaged (Vol. 3, No. 38, 39). As result of highly successful use of microwave relay enabling Chicago station to carry Notre Dame games from South Bend, he promised to supply other stations within reach of WBKB 40 hours of network service per week at cost of only $40 per program hour! South Bend Tribune wants first in. It's easy to see how system can spread out, reduce programcost burdens, even enable stations to make money as more sponsors option time. > (c) Paramount's Paul Raibourn, one of the few movie topkicks really hep to TV, demonstrated how films can be shot directly off the kinescope (receiving) tube, .processed with sound and made ready for repeat telecasts or theater projection in only 66 seconds. Excellent theatre-size films of 3 rounds of the Louis-Walcott fight, and takes from Theatre Guild's TV presentation last Sunday of "The Late George Apley, " were shown to an enthused audience. This demonstration, plus Eastman Kodak experts' papers about new 16mm TV recording camera, quick film processing, etc., bodes well for TV stations' own newsreel and "transcribed" program libraries. (d) AT&T's M. E. Streiby demonstrated double 2-way loops of recently-instituted New York-Boston microwave relay (Vol. 3, No. 46). Viewers could see how little image definition is lost even when signal makes 36 or more hops — total of some 900 mi., or about distance between New York and Chicago. What this augurs for intercity TV, even without coaxial cables, is manifest. There were other facets of more or less importance: Movieman Raibourn asserting TV is essentially an entertainment medium. Baltimore Sun's executive editor Neil Swanson adding he regards TV as a projection of a newspaper's primary function of conveying intelligence and welcoming influx of newspapers into TV. Raibourn warning that the "program's the thing" and that TV must compete with media like movies and sports ($1*8 billion income), newspapers (§1.5 billion), magazines (§1.1 billion), radio including manufacturing, §1.1 billion). TBA's 1947 awards for contributions to TV went to the aforesaid Messrs. Hahn, Donaldson and Eddy, as well as to Zoomar lens developer Dr. Frank G. Back and Kraft Foods' John H. Platt.