Television digest with electronic reports (Jan-Dec 1953)

PUBUSBED WEEKLY BY RADIO NEWS BUREAU • WyATULflL • WASHINGTON 5, D.C. • TELEPHONE STERLING 3-1755 • VOL. 9 li&latiliiJ mkmf DEC December 5, 1953 9:£No. 49 / MARTIN COD El’s AUTHORITATIVE NEWS SERVICE FOR MANAGEMENT OF THE VISUAL BROADCASTING AND ALLIED ELECTRONICS ARTS AND INDUSTRY with Electronics Reports In this issue: Tape TV— Era of 'Electronic Photography/ page 1 13 Cities Definite for Color by Jan. 1, page 3 10 CPs, 3 Dropped, Allocations Changes, page 4 Portland, JVLe. Gets VHF; 3 Others Start, page 5 Spokane's KXLY-TV & Los Angeles' KLAC-TV Sold, p. 6 Telemeter's Impressive Commercial Debut, page 7 Transmitter Shipments & Upcoming Stations, page 9 Inventory Drop Buoys Hopes of Trade, page JO When Will Hollywood Open Film Vaults? page 13 Weaver New NBC Pres.; Robt. Sarnoff, Exec. V.P., p. 14 TAPE TV-ERA OF ELECTRONIC PHOTOGRAPHY': In the burst of speculation about future of TV tape, unleashed by RCA's brilliant demonstrations in Princeton Dec. 1-2, it's sometimes forgotten that initial and major purpose of tape is to record color TV. Tape opens many enticing avenues, but its first job is to provide color TV with a fast, cheap, good equivalent of black-&-white kinescope recordings and film made specifically for TV. While it is possible for TV networks, stations and film producers to make color film and kines, the technical and economic difficulties loom so great — as compared with black-&-white — that something else seems mandatory. And tape looks like the answer to an industry’s prayer. One of tape's many missions is to relieve TV industry of dependence on the relatively few color film processing laboratories in the country. Since RCA officials expect tape to reach commercial stage in 2 years, it will be ready by time it's really needed — when distribution of color sets has become significant. To illustrate enormous savings in money foreseen, RCA says that tape should cost only 5-10% as much as color film for same program, 10-20% as much as black-&white film. These savings are made possible through elimination of film processing and through re-use of tape almost indefinitely, by magnetic "erasure". Savings in time are equally impressive, perhaps more important. After program is put on tape, it can be telecast as fast as it can be rewound — in minutes. Tape simply eliminates film developing and all it connotes in terms of cost, time and introduction of picture-degrading factors. Elaborating on costs, research v.p. E.W. Engstrom said it's RCA's guess that tape apparatus would cost about same as film equipment. Actual tape itself, if used only once, would cost more than equivalent film stock. Add cost of processing film, unnecessary with tape, and cost is about same. Then, considering re-use of tape — up to 25 times or more — tape becomes 10-20% of monochrome film, 5-10% of color film. To illustrate flexibility of tape, Dr. Engstrom said it seems almost impossible to produce color kines fast enough for delayed network broadcasts. * * * * What is the status of tape as of today? We can't recall ever having seen a development so highly refined in a first public demonstration. Both black-3c-white and color recordings were shown — both on color receivers. No black-&-white sets were employed. In our opinion, the black-&-white was better than most kines and as good as some film ; comparison was somewhat difficult in that all black-&-white , even live programs, have less quality on color tube. Dr. Engstrom termed results "better than the poorest kines, not as good as the best." Color was very acceptable, though clearly not as good as live or the Technicolor film we saw in Los Angeles (Vol. 9:45). Comparison here was direct, same scene being shown live and from tape simultaneously. COPYRIGHT 198* BY RADIO NEWS BUREAU