Television digest with AM-FM reports (Jan-Dec 1951)

2 and field camera chains and projection equipment. It's located on high hill outside Matamoros, so that its . 1 Mv/m signal is expected to embrace coverage of 50-mi. or more, taking in all or most of rich Cameron, Hidalgo & Willacy counties, to say nothing of substantial population cluster on Mexican side of Rio Grande. Those counties alone total more than 500,000 population, include wealthy towns of Brownsville , 1950 estimated population 36,000; Harlingen, 23,000; McAllen, 20,000; San Benito, 13,000; Edinburg, 12,000; Mission, 11,000; Mercedes . 10,000; Raymondsville , 9000; Weslaco , 7500. Matamoros has only 8000, but its environs also share in rich fruitlands and big irrigation projects of Rio Grande Valley. Manager Monte Kleban, an American, headquartering at 1111 S.E. Levee St., in Brownsville, has been lining up sponsorships in U.S. with considerable success, planning commercial operation along traditional lines — with kine-recording-services from the U.S. networks. Luis Guaragna, of RCA Victor Mexicana, is engineer in charge of construction. RCA subsidiary will send sets from Mexico City factory into Mexican area, but by far largest sales are expected on U.S. side — with sets to be channeled from wholesale houses of major manufacturers in San Antonio and Houston. * # Sovereign Mexico is fully within its rights in authorizing station, for it has no freeze and is party to agreement with U.S. whereby Channel 7 is allocated to Matamoros. In same allocation plan, but frozen so far as U.S. applicants are concerned, are Channels 4 & 5 allocated to Brownsville. Senor O'Farrill's speedy enterprise will doubtless spur other Mexican interests to hasten efforts to get border stations and get going before FCC ends freeze. They will thus gain same head start in capturing audiences that stations in Buffalo and Detroit have in as yet non-locally served Canada. The allocations agreement gives other Mexican border towns like advantages. For example, Juarez, opposite El Paso (130,000 population) gets Channels 9, 11 & 13 while El Paso gets VHF 2, 4, 5 & 7 and UHF 20 & 26, all frozen; Nuevo Laredo, opposite Laredo (51,000) is allocated VHF 11 & 13 while Laredo's VHF 3 & 8 and UHF 15 are frozen; Tiajuana, near San Diego (321,000) is allocated 6 & 12 while San Diego has one Channel 8 station in operation and VHF 3 & 10 and UHF 21, 27 & 33 frozen. Note : For Mexican channel allocations, see p. 60, TV Factbook No. 13. Also in Factbook are proposed U.S. & Canadian allocations, lists of pending applications. TV FILMS NAY SUPERSEDE LIVE NETWORKS: Conviction is growing in high places that most TV programming will eventually be on films — whether produced by networks themselves or by other enterprisers. Reasons aren't hard to discern: (1) High cost of coaxial-microwave hookups — largest item in TV's overhead — so much higher than for radio that some can't see any chance for network TV, per se, to earn a profit. Cost will mount to staggering proportions when, now promised as of Sept. 30, transcontinental relays west from Omaha will permit linking merely 4 more TV cities into present networks — at huge per-mile cost. (2) Control and editing of programs before telecasting, with just as good quality possible via modern film techniques as via wire or radio relays. Hence the networks' preoccupation not only with their profit-earning owned&-managed TV outlets, but with all kinds of film techniques: kine-recordings . still requiring more development for quality; simultaneous filming of TV shows during performance, permitting superior quality; filmed shows produced exclusively for TV. NBC-TV has even gone so far as to plan making films of popular TV programs and stars for actual showings in movie houses (Vol. 7:26). "Except for news and special events ^ what's there on network TV that can't be shown just as well on a delayed basis?" to quote a top network executive. "And for news and special events, we can simply buy special hookups on a plug-in basis instead of contracting for monthly or yearly rentals of coaxial-microwave circuits." AT&T may not like it — but, then, neither did the radio networks like it at first when high-fidelity recording came along, indistinguishable from live shows, offering just as good program fare, winning official recognition of FCC when it