Television digest with electronics reports (Jan-Dec 1953)

5 originating station, is that satellite would be "locally controlled" and "permit program selectivity". The only experimental booster operation, so far, is that conducted in Lawrenceburg, Tenn. by WSM-TV, Nashville. Station is still experimenting, hasn't yet asked Commission to commercialize boosters. Illustrative of potential for satellites, Sylvania says that there are 8721 communities with population under 50,000 — 4437 with 1000-2500, 1846 with 2500-5000, 1176 with 5-10,000, 778 with 10-25,000, 252 with 25-50,000. 2,000,000 UHF SETS & CONVERSION UNITS: The TV manufacturing industry's first-year uhf record : Some 2,000,000 uhf receivers and converters in use and in trade pipelines. While this is an estimate — in absence of industry statistics on strip and converter output — we believe it is good sizeup of progress made by manufacturers exactly one year since first commercial uhf station — Portland's KPTV — turned on the juice. Production of uhf units now is limited only by demand — manufacturers are equipped to double their output virtually overnight if necessary. For comparison, the first "big TV year", 1947, saw production of less than 180.000 sets, and fewer than 1,000,000 were produced following year. Breaking down the 2,000,000, it includes: (1) 800,000 sets factory-equipped with uhf tuners. (2) Strips to convert some 350,000 sets. (3) About 850,000 converters, internal and external, for field installation. Our figures aren't estimates of sets-in-use. They're units produced to date and they include sets and converters in trade pipelines and in areas where uhf stations haven't yet gone on air. Sets-in-use figures would be considerably lower. These figures bring up-to-date our estimates of last July 4 (Vol.9:27), and are bolstered by brand new RETMA statistics on vhf-uhf receiver production. RETMA this week reported 622,507 sets were produced with built-in uhf tuners from Jan. 1 through July 31, 1953 — or 15% of industry's 7-month TV output. This figure doesn't include receivers converted in the field. Our July 4 estimate came very close to RETMA' s actual figures: We reported 608,000 sets factory-equipped for uhf during first 6 months of 1953 — or 16% of total output. Projecting RETMA' s figures up-to-the-minute, on basis of about 5,000,000 TV sets produced so far this year, we figure nearly 800,000 had uhf built-in at the factory. From uhf stations and distributors, we learn that sets converted in the field (strips and converters) outnumber factory-built vhf-uhf sets by about 5-to-2 ratio. Applying this ratio to estimate of factory-equipped sets, we reckon nearly 1.200.000 field conversions in use and in pipelines as of today. Add 100,000 uhf sets produced or converted in 1952, and total comes to just about 2,000,000 uhf sets and "conversion units" produced to date. To get breakdown of "conversion units" as between strips and other types of converters, we applied statistics from distributors in representative samplings of uhf areas — indicating that about 40% of field conversions are made with strips. * * * * Our surveys of manufacturers in July (Vol.9:27) and August (Vol.9:34) show virtually all of them expect big boost in production of vhf-uhf sets for remainder of year. Consumer demand, of course, will be deciding factor — and it's getting tremendous push from high-powered promotion by the new uhf stations. If outlook for uhf is as good as manufacturers tell us it is, the cumulative total of uhf sets-converters-strips could reach 4,000,000 by year's end. With recent opening of uhf stations in such large vhf markets as Pittsburgh, Kansas City, St. Louis, Boston, Buffalo, Norfolk and Milwaukee, demand for strips and converters for old sets can be expected to continue high in proportion to demand for brand new vhf-uhf sets. Could be that days of vhf-only receivers are numbered. A glance at list of CPs for new stations (see Special Report, Sept. 12), and applications pending, shows that very few areas will be without uhf. So while converter-&-strip sales may reach peak within year or so, production of factory-built vhf-uhf sets should continue to climb until the set without uhf is the exception rather than the rule.