Television digest and FM reports (Feb-Dec 1947)

1948 (DuMont tells us his 2 will). And, that the movie moguls v/ill awaken to facts of TV life — one obvious fact being Every Home a Newsreel Theater (Vol. 3, No. 44) ; this item, incidentally, aroused more interest, provoked more requests for extra copies, than anything we've published in our nearly 3 years of existence. To our friends and subscribers, whose gracious well wishes and welcome suggestions have helped this enterprise to success. ... our best to all of you for a. Happy and Prosperous 1948. CITY-BY-CITY CENSUS OF TV SETS: Year will end with some 200,000 TV sets in homes, taprooms, showrooms of the scant dozen metropolitan areas now enjoying regular local TV service (TV Directory No. 1). Eleven-month total production was just about 150,000, as reported to RMA (Vol. 3, No. 51). Assuming December production at 25,000, adding another 25,000 to cover pre-1947 plus non-RMA plus kit (home-built) production — and you get the 200,000 grand total. That's conservative. Question we're often asked, particularly by advertising agencies, is where are these sets? To get answer, we queried those best qualified to know, since RMA auditors as yet don't break down figures geographically. We asked TV station operators in the 11 cities having service. All responded, citing best available estimates for their metropolitan areas as of Dec. 1, usually based on their own tallies of local distributor-dealer sales reports. It's surprising how well total of their estimates jibes with aforesaid 200,000, making due allowances for as yet unreported December production and for sets still in warehouses, showrooms, etc. : Los Angeles: 10,000, reports KTLA's Klaus Landsburg. District of Columbia; 4,500, agree NBC's WNBW and DuMont's WTTG ; 2-3,000, says WMAL-TV's Kenneth Berkeley. Chicago: 11,000 at Xmas time according to WBKB's Bill Eddy, maintaining count in collaboration with Electric Assn. Baltimore: 2,500, according to WMAR-TV's Bob Cochrane. Detroit: 4,500, says WWJ-TV. St. Louis: 2,500, says KSD-TV. New York: 80 . 000 , says WNBT's Noran Kersta (NBC) ; 100,000 by Jan. 1 at present rate, says WCBS-TV commercial dept.; between 90,000-105,000, says WABD's Lawrence Phillips (DuMont). Schenectadv-Albany-Troy : 1 , 125 , says GE's WRGB (surprisingly low in view of relatively long-time existence of this pioneer station). Cleveland: up to 3,000 shipped into area for Dec. 17 opening of WEWS (Vol. 3, No. 48). Philadelphia : 12.000, says WFlL-TV's Ken Stowman; 18,000, says WPTZ's James McLean (Philco). Milwaukee: 400, says WTMJ-TV's Walter Damm. Nearly all reported accelerating rate of sales so that foregoing figures are subject to practically daily revisions upward. We have no report on Cincinnati, whose WLWT (Crosley) is as yet operating on non-commercial, experimental basis, though on fairly frequent schedule. WHAT Bin TV SET MAKSES THIHK: Emerson's Ben Abrams may be the biggest shot in the small-set radio field, but he's talking through his hat when he opines other producers are devoting "an inordinate portion of productive capacity to TV" (Vol. 3, No. 51). As for his forecast of a §150 TV set within 2 years, a consummation devoutly wished by everybody, so long as quality (and picture size) isn't sacrificed, the reaction is: "We're from Missouri." That's gist of reactions when we asked some of those "other producers" for comment. None wanted to be quoted, but this point was made by one: Even at Abrams' own figure (40,000 Emerson TV sets at §275 retail scheduled for 1948) dollar volume will amount to §11,000,000 — and that ain't hay! In fact, dollar volume is key to industry's 1948 calculations. Unit production of all sets is so high (close to 17,000,000 this year) that there's bound to be decrease. But TV will lift dollar volume. RCA and GE admit their TV production is already approaching 50% dollar volume; in individual TV cities, figure is much higher. Philco says 25% to 50%, and it's preparing to hop up its distributors still more about TV at Palm Beach sales convention Jan. 19 week. Only direct crackback at Abrams came from Bruno-New York's Irving Sarnoff, biggest RCA distributor. In New York Times interview Tuesday, he took issue with "some producers whose only aim is to reduce prices," expressed confidence current