Variety (Jan 1949)

r Wetlneaday, January 5, 1949 • Forty, ihird P'^SHETY Anniversaey RADIO 9S Radio Is Here To Stay By LEWIS ALLEN WEISS (President, Don he'e Broadcasting System) Hollywood. There has been so much extravagant publicity about 4*iP«ision that it is time to appraise the future of the iew medium and to assert that radio is here to stay for a long time. True, radio's audience is slightly diminishing with the expansion of TV, but examinatioii of the problem on a long range basis reyeals that th^ new art form is beset by many com- plex technical and economic, factprs that will limit its circtilatioh for sev- eral more years, even thoUgh a qoajc^ ial (table may link New York and Hollywood by 1952. ^ . Fast and cheap, .radlb " renders a service to city, village and \ f^rra in, such a variegated patterp that cost uta • of duplicating this service in video ^ewis Allen Weiss ^.^^^j^j require an investment m box- "^Indeed"the manufacture of television sets sufCiciont to ..furate this great potential will require many years at the present rate of assembly-line production. Further, television still faces three major hurdles that must be cleared before it can en.ioy widespread set sales ■ by a public already sharply conscious of cost-of-living ""'The first of these is a possibility of a channel' shift to hieher frequencies. While this will afl'oct the telecaster more than the individual set owner, it still may cause ex- oressions of hurt surprise by lookers who are not cog- " nizant of this technical necessity to clear the lower spec- trum for other uses, thus obsolescing many receivers. A ' somewhat similar upset occurred in AM years ago^ andv more recently in FM, obsolescing practically every FM receiving set in the country overnight. The public should be informed now that the upper bands once designated as "high" and allocated for TV iiSes; have since, due to more thorough scientific research, become "low" aS experimenters continue to explorp the ultra high frequency levels. Bein^ first in the aerial communications stracturei FM radio enjoys a fixed position, with more and more;special stations' clamoring for avenues below it, and: even dO' manding a slice of the lower television bands beyond it, thus leaving TV the only alternative of moving upward. A Pattern of Confusion Add to this the fact that more than 2,000 stations now share the AM highways and the pattern of confusion for the public is complete. Without this knowledge it is apparent why the public Will be confused When it discovers that channel shifts have moved favorite TV stations beyond, the scope of many receiver tuning dials. Secondly, if: the. receiver owner manages to. have a quality set that will encompass the higher channels, he will.be.faced sooner or later with the purchase of a new set that will accept color. Polychrome, of course, will necessitate a shift to higher megacycles anyway, because of the wide pathway required for it. Thus, if the home- owner manages to span the higher level with his re' ceiver, the advent of color will again obsolesce his mono- chrome set. Many .-telecasters, happily in ignorance of such basic technical facts, consequently make all sorts of claims and predictions for television which only deceives the public and builds up an expectancy which may turn to wrath,, once the scramble of channel shifts emerges with the grim: reality that a new home receiver is required. In in- forming the public also, the television industry should .makedear that most so-called wave traps, adapters and other supplementary gimmicks are impracticali Trusting citizens will buy them, only to find that they have been Life Can Be Hooperfui By ROBERT P. HELLER (CBS Executive Producer, N, Y.) All of • your radio life you'd, been (as Corwin once put It) tall, dark and sustaining. A,longhair, do-gooder, pub- lic servicer. You'd- believed passionately in your side oi radio. You'd tried to pioneer some new techniques and you'd been moderately successful. At times you'd been snobbish. You hadn't cared how the other half in radio lived. You'd been above all that. Theui. one morning six months ago, you found yourself al a new desk with a new job—on the other side of the fence. When • the phone .rang it wasn't an atomic ■ scien- tist or the head of a research foundation; it was an ad- vertising agency. The papers on your desk weren't the latest reports on racial tensions; they were ratings,, pro- gram schedules,- commercial announcements, outlines of new mysteries, new quizzes, new dramatic shows. Your new associates spoke a new language; they kicked an idea arpund instead of discussing it. You were in a new world. - Now, a half-year later, you're much more at home in it. You're detached enough to make comparisons. According : . to your old friends, you'd been as pure as the driven snow, hut.you'd drilled. Into what? Now it can be told. • For the lir.st time in your radio: life you know-compe- tition and you appreciate it. You realize that your docu- mentary job was relatively easy. It wasn't too crucial that you reached eight million Americans^or 20 million, Now. you find yourself in a day-to-day sweat, as a creative crafts- man, to make your programs better entertainment, better - communication. Because now the ultimate payoff is audi' ence—more audience.. In the hectic heat of commercial competition, you've learned more about reaching people than 10 years of public service ever^ taught you. Your goal isn't awards, important and satisfying as they can be. You're tight'ing for as many ears as you ean-attract.-^ That means knowing the American people^what they want—better than you've ever known before. You dis-' cover that commercial radio is much clo-ser to grass roots than its severest critics would be willing to grant. As a documentarian, you'd been given all the time you needed to prepare your shows. You and your writers had : been blessed with the freedom and the funds to experi* ment. So when you moved over, you were worried. But . not for long. Because you saw a producer like Cy'';How- ard encouraged to take all the time he needed, all the : experimentation and concentration, to evolve the fina|; formula for "Life With Luigi." No deadline, no presssures. And what emerged was a program that was fresh and new. Building time: almost two years. In the evolution of "Our Miss Brooks," on which work had been started a year before you arrived, you witnessed a doggedness and perseverance that came as a refreshing and pleasant surprise. You watched the new series grovsr- through draft after draft; you followed the painstaking search for the right lead. And when, late last Spring, you listened to the final audition record starring Eve Ar- den, you were happy. Not only because all the hard work had been rewarded; more, because you were involved in: a network "package" operation that was just as devoted to experimentation and perfection as the Documentary Unit you'd been so proud of. Yet, even with these good impressions, you ve had your anxious moments, when you questioned yourself, and longed for the absolute, sustaining purity you'd once pos- sessed. Moments when you reacted to the very small minority of the men and women on the commercial side t)f the fence who rankly underestimate the tastes of their listening audience, who seek higher ratings with less qusii- Ity. ' They are the very lew you've met who have small respect for their medium. Biit at such times you reached for the network sched? ule covering an entire week. You measured the happier trends against the dark. You looked for the broad pattern. And you found yourself on the side of the optimists. Be- cause you noticed the two sides of radio moving towards Morris. 1,. Krnst TV In Relation to the Public Interest; Gov't Subsidy ? By MORRIS L. ERNST In all the to-do about television, the industry Aiinds have gotten so panicky that they have lost sight of at least one essential factor. Video is not equipped to do serious harm to feature films in picture theatres. People like to go out : of the hornet and the screen is too small for any story other than a man and a woman on a raftl; On the otiier hand, television, in time,' Will ;take; over or subsume radip for aU sfept:'' news events: and ideasi If : fh* Bt^^^^ assumption is inco^rect^ I, suggest that the harm will be done to the film ; dustry primarily bece^use of the stupid- ity of the; leadership tif the industry. in facing up to television. /\ye all re' member when ; thei three great .prtss associations agreed, / by-resoiiiUdn,;. t^ allow, none of their' news' to ;^e. h^ai-d ■ over the radio. This is typical Of the state of mind now held by the giant film companies. • The social danger of television arises from very differs ent facts: It looks now as if, for many decades, we will: have: no more than 1,000 television broadcasting stations. It takes at least $1,000,000 to go into television. This means we will have competition between 1,000 million- . aires pr millionaire companies. : This means • also that ' there will not be much diversity of basic attitudes and points of view. Moreover, it,takes'a lot of money for the telephone company to supply the wires for the effective use of television. I would suggest that the Government will either have, to force;the telephone company to putv- in many dollars in order to help the development of tele-; vision, or have the Government itself make the investment and own the cables. On the other hand, I do not believe that the people of this nation wilt long permit this great V new instrument to be owned by 1,000 millionaires' alid there will be a plea^suocessful though invalid-^for the Government to take over television. This is a frightening ;' concept, even more frightening than having this great new pipeline to the mind of man in the hands of only 1,000 millionaires. . , We have proceeded in other walks of life in a direction which might point to a way out of the dilemma. In our national parks, for example, hotels and restaurants are.; owned by the Government. The Government put in the money to build the structures. The Government then leases the restaurants, for example, at a fair return based on the Government's investment,, and to those organizations which will supply the best service to the public; Maybe we should consider liaving the Government put up the billion dollars needed for television station equipment -inr ' stead of: allowing 1,000 millionaire: groups to do it. - If the Government owned the investment, it could lease the investment to the license holders at a low Interest and: replacement rate and could then invite bids from the' public for the running of the 1,000 television stations. In this connection't at this point, I should imagine tliat Variety might then be able to be one of'the bidders ivn^ der such circumstances and could do an amusing job! In other words, instead of hiving a limited market of 1,000 millionaires bidding for this new instrument, there might be 10,000 bidding groups or individuals, and without any semblance of censorship or control over content of pro- ; .grams we w,ould be increasing the potential diversity and attitudes of licensees of television. , :, >• ; Amusingly enough I find substantial support for. this : thesis among people who are present investors in this ex- pensive new toy of man known as television. cheated and twice betrayed by a TV industry striving for each other. You saw public service programming learn national circulation in this generatidn. fr«m/.ommpi-nini rariin hnw to talk to more and more "Thirdly, there's the program hiirdle. As television popu- larity increases, the program list must be lengthened. Mommg and afternoon shows must be initiated, each one sequentially spurting operating costs beyond an over- all nut covered by slowly added sponsors. Also, there is no turning back, because once pendered to the public in the tace of growing competition, a program service must oe maintained. Therefore, it is logical that telecast crs will grow more dollar conscious as they lengthen their program lists to meet radio in all time brackets. Later (On, a few outstanding examples of profitable TV station operations cannot, with justice, be set as criteria for a national pattern. '5'°" growing rapidly in selected metropolitan centers favorable for its development, and technical ad- vances are being made every year. There is no denying "s great sales impact artd in time TV rate cards may be Si A^" ^" attempt to reach a national parity with «to -t ^^'^^ radio, itself the target of the mon- l'^^" Whelped, may be forced to reduce its own rates, m mat even, a whole new field of circumstances will be put into play. Radio set manufacturers, unwilling to see imli'^*-''''?"*"''^^ market entirely disappear, even while "itratively manufacturing TV sets, may be forced-to re ing from commercial radio how to talk to more and more Americans the way they want to be talked to. And you saw commercial radm as a whole moving towards higher levels of quality, taste and usefulness. , , As a veteran of one side of the fence, and a newcomer to the other, you come out believing it possible to bridge that gap. You believe it can be done, because you are working towards that end and you see that your present colleagues don't scoff at you, but have the very same hopes, and the same dogged drive to see it come to pass. Scoring for Television By HARRY SOSNIK Composing background music for television brings into u.se a technique not called for in radio, but similar to that used in motion pictures, although more difficult. In motion pictures the scenes are filmed and then run off for the composer who times the length of each sequence and then composes his music to the stopwatch. During the actual recording the film is run as often as is necessary, until the perfect recording is made. In the new science of composing music for television In Lp}"i*^?„*"* '^^M^.sets or produce cheaper models, this 'composer v?rites"to"a scriipTin"which "he tries to lime l,,,JI=A„'=°™Pensating the radio broadcasting industry sequences calling for music as accurately as possible numerioally for the audience lost to television. fi.H struggle of the TV and AM giants of the luture, radio will have on its side the leaders of national by himself, always making allowances for visual sl.igeplay between lines of dialog. In the script the scenes without f.n„„v, A/^^^ca lives in the "outside market," the smaller nn^ilu"""^'^^ help give the nation its character and purcnasing power and which have little chance of getting televLsion m the near future. rp^^*^ ^-elevision grows a little more, a pleasant and «edssuring indication that the spirit of Free Enterprise ^ at work in this counti-y. Don Lee's position in this com- munication field is unique in that its KTSL went on the er,n;r' ^^' ^^31- and has been beaming regular TV pro- inti^ '^^'■oss Southern California rooftops throughout the cE'^"!?^." y^^'fs. This fact leads us to the ready con- mnnP ^^^^^ is nothing wrong with television that the '^"""''t ewe ... but at this writing it appears that Averaging Principle Mpnoiai , i... V""- "° o.u^ ^"v 'v-cMv- ^-r-:----- a„Heo are briefly described and what may look hke a two Sf 'y*"*. '""''^ constantly produce more than a few ^"j^^i^e .eauence on paper may turn out to be three or ha! of'^^^'J'' tj^^i"^ charts, because almost J^'„';"'^Ss du"ng the dress rehearsal, nait of America 1,vp« i„ "„,.f.,,i„ ,v„.tot thp omaller *°^^^„^the dress rehear.sal is the first complete run- through for cast and orchestra, and is held shortly before the telecast, it is obvious thati the music must be flejtible enough so that entire sections can be added or taken out at a moment's notice. After the dress rehearsal, correc- tions are made/ Then it is up to the conductor, for the next run-thKough is the actual telecast and that i.S it. The conductor and orchestra are in a different, studio than the cast. He has a screen with no audio to, \yatch the action, a pair of headphones (one ear for audio and the other ear for master; control Ciiies), a script and /his scores brfpre hiitt. From ail this it is apparent, that this mediuni Wiii have to;^d^^^ group of ra6n as di^; tfie motibij wctvire industry: during its forma- years. There is one other suggestion which has not been previ- ously publicly discussed . which might greatly help tele' vision. The greatest: single: retarding influence- in the der velopment of this great new medium is the vast sums that must.be laid out by the telephone company for cables.con- necting: different stations. As I see the figures, such jn- vestment may be called for from the social and public point of view beyond the point where the telephone comp . : pany win make an adequate return on the .sums laid out. This economic dilemma can be solved in two ways: il) for the Federal Communications Commission, under its : rate-making power to insist on the oldfashioned averaging principle, that is the coaxial cable lo.ss to be compensated for by increased charges elsewhere levied against the pub- lic by the telephone system. This averaging principle is no different than what is used on every railroad in the country. A 14-mile subway ride in New York City even for 10c results in a loss but is sound business when predi- cated on the averaging process that shows a profit on the short-haul trips. (2 ) As an alternative to forcing the tele- phone company to go forward on such a basis, I think it would be worthwhile to have the Government make the investment in such cabes, open them freely without con-: trols of any kind to all users and charging such reasonable sums as may be needed to compensate the Government for its, investment, it being under.stood that the Government's investment, because ot its cheaper interest rate borrowing, capacity, would result in much lower- rates than those, which would properly be needed by the telephone cora- ■■pany.'..''' ■ ' . • ■•■ Both of the steps might incorrectly be attacked as moyes in the direction of Government domination-of the tele-, vision business. This-makes no sense to. me, particularly when we realize that practically every newspaper and mijg- azine in the nation gets a subsidy through postage rates on all of its mailings- And our press is the freest in the ■-world!' ■ . dPQniffL^?"'*' require all the money in the country liWo J? u*?? •'^PPy little publicity stories foisted on a gul/ jnen Cines" whn^t«ilf,^*V^*' ^'^'"iS "r^' 111''F„7es*t?N?0i"'bourse the ultimate answer to all the complicated With nary ^ thiffi f IS Megacycle Foiests ^ ^^^^j to eventually do shows of this type on film. Sure Can Take It The story I like is the one about the man with the big Cadillac who brought it back to his garage in a dreadfully battered condition. It really was smashed up. The Negro garage attendant says, "Mister Jones, what in the world hap- pened?" The Cadillac owner replied glumly, "A Ford hit me." The Negro attendant walked all the way around the car, took another survey of the damage and says, "How many times?" ■ —John Kieran,