Variety (January 1953)

fffiwIneBtlay? January 7» 1953 Forty-seventh RADIO-TELEVISION 91 ansion in Television in ’53 RCA Prexy’s Facts and Figures Reaffirm New Medium’s Tremendous Impact on the American Scene Turning the Stork Club Into a TV By SHERMAN BILLINGSLEY Wien it was first arranged for CBS-TV to televise a part of an evening- from the Stork Club, I’ll admit I looked to it with apprehension, as a matter of fact I was badly afflicted with stage fright. I was so frightened that u even the thought of facing, on radio interviews, one of those grizzly ma- chines known as microphones, that suck up every Word and inflection and scatter them wildly to the four Jpg winds, was positively paralyzing. So ***** you can imagine how I felt about cameras. Then, too, though the Stork Club is large enough for its own needs, I was a little dubious about filling up the house with cameras, cables, bright lights, a control room, direc- tors and technicians. The walls have Sherman Billingsley their Umits And the huh-hub, I thought, might drive us right out of the place. The Stork is rather quiet, and we like it that way. When I think over my early apprehensions I’m really surprised that I didn’t laugh off the idea at the very start. Apparently I have more gambling instinct than I realize, because, though the prospects were forbidding, I took the plunge. At first it really was confusing. It was like a stranger coming in and taking over your place right from under your nose. The club was full of equipment brand new to me, and of production people and technicians, marvel- ously efficient, who. knew their jobs and did them well. But it was strange. Having nursed the Stork Club for a good many years, I was accustomed to being intimately acquainted with everything connected with it. Now I was slightly overwhelmed by all the bustle of activity which was foreign to me. But, now, three years have passed and I’m a veteran. Television and I are .very well acquainted and, in general I think, on the best of terms. The hub-hub is not nearly as disturbing as I imagined it would be. The show, hav- ing become a long established routine, I don’t feel that there is any confusion at all. It’s simply a comfortable part of the week. The production people from CBS-TV. go about their duties with the steady certainty of people who know their, jobs. The waiters in.TV Cub Room are so absolutely oblivious to the cameras, I sometimes won- der if. th"ey know they are, there. Guests at the Stork take the broadcasts in stride, and, I think, enjoy them. Of course, many of our guests are used to cameras, being movie and television performers or stage stars. But those who are not, accept the cameras very naturally and Without the slightest trace of discom- fort or self-consciousness. My own reaction is very surprising to me.. I expected, as I said, to simply wither away on the first broadcast, If the cameras had been atomic cannons they couldn’t have seemed more deadly. It is not really comfortable for anyone, I shouldn’t think, to attempt to carry on naturally a conversation with two or three people which is being heard all over the country. We don’t memorize lines or hide behind scripts. We are on our own—way out on the end of a limb. Frank M. Folsom By FRANK M. FOLSOM ( President, RCA ) Show business* biggest audience in 1952 was in the American home, and it promises to be even bigger in 1953. The prospect of larger audiences and greater markets in the broadcasting and phonograph fields in 1953 offers tremendous op- portunity for public service and profitable enterprise to those who provide* the nation’s music and enter- tertainment, and to those who manu- facture and distribute the products which bring them into the home. A glance at the accomplishments of the past year indicates the extent to which the home has become a great entertainment centre. On the broadcasting end, for ex- ample, the sales of NBC, alone, dur- ing the first, nine months of the year, totaled more than $92,000,000, of which almost $58,000,000 was for television. And America’s vast home audience spent more than $1,500,000,000. (billion that is) to buy 6,000,000.television sets and more than 9,000,000 radio sets. Today there are nearly 21,000,000 television homes and 44,000,000 are radio-equipped. This same living-room audience spent another $290,- 000,000 in the phonograph industry to buy recordings and record players that enabled them to hear the finest of- ferings of the opera and concert stage, and the best in . popular music. Today, 22,000,000 phonographs are in use. But we have not, by any means, reached the end of the line. Still greater markets are there for those — whether they be artists, broadcasters and sponsors, or manufacturers, distributors and dealers—prepared and equipped to offer quality products and services to an in- creasingly quality-minded public. The radio-television industry, operating throughout 1952 under the impetus of ever-growing demands from both the Government and the public, achieved new all- time records in production, merchandising, and servicing of electronic equipment. As the year closed, the annual “going rate” of the in- dustry was estimated at $5,000,000,000. Present analyses of market potentials indicate a continuing upward trend in 1953, with the industry rate approaching $6,000,000,000 during the Tatter part of the year. Equipped with the greatest production capacity in its history, the radio-television industry is successfully meet- ing the dual requirements of manufacturing for the na- tional defense and the domestic market. In RCA, this is largely due to the outstanding teamwork of employees and the splendid cooperation of suppliers. While defense production. formed the bulk of the in- dustry’s output in 1952. television continued to be the major factor in the civilian field. America’s overwhelming acceptance of television as one of our most powerful mediums of entertainment, educa- tion, and news is shown by the fact that, in the last six years, the public’s investment in TV receivers amounts to more than $9,000,000,000. | ~ 150To 200 New TV Stations in 1953 ' . i vances—Extended Play, which doubles the playing time of single 45-rpm records, and the “Bluebird Classics” albums. EP records make it practical to record—complete on one side—hundreds of shorter classical works which did not fit logically on previous records and, also, they consider- ably rediice the cost of popular music albums. One of the most significant releases during the year was RCA Victor’s recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Sym- phony. by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Or- chestra; The list of great opera merchandise was strength- ened with the addition of the full-length “La Boheme,” “11 Trovatore,” “Tosca” and “Boris Goudonoff,” albums of highlights from “Carmen,” “Lucia di Lammermoor”-and ‘ Idomeneo,” and the celebrated “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” The year’s top show albums were “Wish You Were Here” and “New Faces.” By the end of 1953, the sale of 78-rpm records probably will amount to less than 25% of the market, having been replaced by the newer, unbreakable and easier-to-handle 45 and 33 rpm records. With the increased number of turntables now in use, including new three-speed players, and with the growth of interest in music throughout the country, the phonograph industry can look forward to the . greatest sa les i n its 7 5- year hist ory. ! The Outlook Best to Be Nonchalant There’s nothing to do but make up your mind to it. Either you worry about all of the people watching you, and get so wound up in thinking about them that you don.T even hear what’s being said to you, or you concen- trate on the person you’re talking with. Actually, the latter is easier. So, little by little, I’ve gotten used to being a television performer—mostly by not performing at all, but simply doing the sort of talking and listening I’m used to doing in the Stork Club. One of the nicest and most gratifying things occurred on the program recently (you may have seen it )■* Dorothy Lamour, who was at one time employed by me as a singer in the Stork Club, was in^New York for a few days and dropped in to be miy special guest on the show. It was a sort of birthday for both of us, because it was the anniversary of Dorothy’s coming to work for me and. also of the opening of the Cub Room. Dorothy surprised me by sort of turning tables and interviewing me instead of my interviewing her. Then she thanked me very charmingly for having had faith in her talent when, she Avas unknown (.though, believe me, her talent and fine potentialities were abundantly apparent, and I am still surprised that they weren’t appreciated at her other auditions at the time). Finally she had a Cub Room birth- day cake brought in and led the entire roomful of guests m singing “Happy Birthday, Stork Club.” These old and remembered attachments are among the greatest satisfactions of iny life—on arid off television. I single Dorothy out, but there are many, many old friends in Hollywood and the theatre and other fields liave delighted me by offering to appear On the “Stork Club snow. And, of course, it is they, arid their fame and inter- ^shng p rofessions, that make the program. Earl Wilson a wake the somewhat unsteady pallbearers stumbled ver the threshold arid dropped the casket. The jar aused ihe “deceased” man to sit up, quite alive. . • •=•• *ears later the same pallbearers were carrying the same an out in a casket. As they neared the door, the^mans 'Maow shouted to them, “Watch out for the threshold! In 1953, it is expected that between 150 and 200 new UHF (ultra-high frequency) and VHF Tvery-high fre- quency) stations will go on the air. Approximately 5,000,000 additional families will be brought into televi- sion’s range of service for the first time. On the basis of this expectation, plus the replacement market, it is believed the industry will distribute approximately 6,- 250,000 new television sets sets during the next year. As one of the principal manufacturers in the industry, RCA Victor produced as many radio and television home instruments in 1952 as Government allocations of ma- terials permitted. The greatest demand in the television field' was for 21-inch receivers. The public’s desire for larger screen sizes is growing, and this trend probably will result in substantial sales of 27-inch receivers by the end of 1953. In radio, the trend is to small sizes with high performance. Miniaturization of component parts and tubes is enabling us to meet this demand in radio. With the increasing interest in larger screen sizes for television receivers, the replacement market is rapidly developing as an important factor in television merchan- dising. At the same time, there is a growing number of ^ television families with two or more receivers in then ^Throughout 1953, the expansion of Television service will focus greater attention on. UHF. While the number of VHF stations will continue to increase, ftiany^ commu- nities will be served by both VHF and UHF. Still others will be served by UHF alone. . . • The rapidly expanding UIIF television market is a direct outgrowth of RCA’s experimental “proving ground at Bridgeport, Conn., where the practical problems of UHF were solved and virtually the. entire industr tested its receiver designs. Largely as a result of these . •/•nments, the “freeze” on television station construction broken in 1952, arid the broadcasting industry hailed the highly successful inauguration of the first post-freeze VHF. station in Denver, and the first commercial UHF station in Portland, Ore. The contributions of RCA and RCA Victor engineers in bringing television to these new mar- kets included not only the design and construction of these transmitters, but advances in receiver design and the in- stallation of new combination UHF-VHF antennas. A major contributor to television’s present stature, the National Broadcasting Co.—a service of RCA—completed its 26th year in 1952. In both radio and television pro- gramming, NBC continued to offer new, high-calibre shows and to introduce new ideas and new talent. The most important developments in phonograph rec- ords in 1952 were those which helped to provide record buyers with “more music for less money.” The pattern was set by RCA Victor’s introduction of two major ad- One of the most significant things about the electronics industry is its long-range capacity for expansion and diver- sification. In this connection, it often has been predicted in the past that the non-entertainment applications of elec- tronics would some day produce a greater volume of busi- ness than radio and television. ' While non-entertainment applications are still far short of forming the major output, the year 1952 brought a pro- nounced quickening of interest on the part of different ele- ments of the industry in an unusually wide range of devel- opments in electronics for business, industry and health. High on the list of* these potentially important develop- ments were: 1. Electronic Business Systems. Capable of tremendous savings in time, energy, and space, these systems can handle inventory, general accounting, and payroll func- tions completely and efficiently. They are expected to find broad applications not only in general business, but also in such specialized fields as Government, insurance, utility, mail order, and circulation of newspapers and magazines. The RCA Victor Division is presently con- structing an electronic inventory control, system under Government order for the U. S. Army Ordnance Corps. 2. Medical Instruments.' To the list of such electronic devices as the electron microscope, X-ray, diathermy, and electro-enccphalograph will be added, it is expected, a number of new types of accurate and unique instruments of importance to medical diagnosis. Already developed by RCA Laboratories Division is an electronic viscometer that determines the rate at which an individual’s blood coagulates. 3. Personal Services.. Miniaturization of tubes and parts, as well as the development of transistors (which perform many of the functions of electron tubes), hold a great promise for the advancement of personal service devices in radio and recording. 4 . Industry. ..Now in substantial use by manufacturers, electronic devices of detective, control, inspection, and automatic'’Operation can b.^i .expected to find increasing application in the next few years. 5. Printing. All-electronic color correction instruments are under development to provide the first economical i#eans of achieving quick and accurate color reproduction in magazines and daily newspapers. The RCA Vidor Division has an electronic color correction device in. an advanced stage of development. The growth and expansion of the radio-television and electronics industry is an outstanding example of Ameri- can industry’s capacity for teamwork. For our civilian population, this teamwork meant more and better television and radio sets, records, transmitting and industrial equipment, and all the other products that have enabled the people of our country to achieve their high standard of living. For our Armed Forces, it meant military equipment and technical assistance to help keep our country strong and free. Big companies and small companies worked together to make the products needed for our civilian use and de- fense. At RCA, for example, nearly 5,000 independently- owned companies helped supply the materials and services needed to manufacture finished products. Three-fourths of these suppliers are classified by the Government as small business firms, and they receive approximately half of the dollar volume of all RCA purchases. 'The electronic symbol is a bright and guiding star that challenges science and industry to advance into new fields of endeavor, to create, and to improve with quality and efficiency as the standards. Meredith Willson Chet “Lum” Lauck moved Out to Bel Air. One afternoon Mrs. Lauck answered the door to a little boy and girl dressed . in their parents’ clothes, playing “grown-up.” The little girl, wobbling about on high-heeled shoes and carrying a huge pocketbook twice as big as she was, pointed to her little boy friend'" lost iri his father’s derby hatb and said: “We’re Mr. and Mrs. Thompson come to call.” Mrs. Lauck said, “Why come right in, Mr., and Mrs..Thomp- son, and sit down.” After about 10 minutes of “grown-up” visiting, the little girl said, “By the way, when we visit the other ladies’ houses they always serve tea.” “What was I thinking of," Mrs. Lauck said. ‘Til get the tea right away.” She rushed to the kitchen and came back with a tray of ginger snaps and Canada Dry, just in time to hear the front door slam and see her callers hurrying off down the walk. She opened the door and called out, “Aren’t you going to stay for the tea?” “ Without slowing up the little girl called back over = her shoulder: “We can’t stay. Mr. Thompson just wet his panties.”