Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1960)

4 JANUARY 11, 1960 Commission sent out 5,236 questionnaires — one to each TV, AM & FM station. By week's end, it had received 4,500-5,000, and staff of 4 was simply sorting, not reading them. Joseph Nelson, renewal & transfer branch chief, says it will probably take couple months to study the reports. LULL BEFORE STORM IN CONGRESS: Broadcasting got through opening days of 2nd session of 86th congress last week without suffering any blows threatened by quiz-&-payola scandals (Vol. 16:1). No anti-TV & radio floor speeches were made on Washington's "topic A." In Senate & House, 135 bills & 48 resolutions were introduced, but in whole batch only one — HR-9448 by Rep. Avery (D-Kan.) — ^had anything to do with broadcasting. And it wasn't pxmitive. It just called for statutory confirmation of FCC's policy of reserving TV channels for educational use. No denunciations of state of broadcasting were made in State of Union message by President Eisenhower. He had been aroused enough by quiz scandals to call them "terrible thing" for country (Vol. 15:43 p2) and to order report on them by Justice Dept, (see p. 2). But TV & radio escaped any mention in his survey of U.S. troubles. In fact, industry issues came alive at session's start only in Congressional Record appendix. Sen. Jovits (R-N.Y.) inserted sermon by N.Y. Rabbi deploring quiz frauds. Sen. Proxmire (D-Wis.) inserted Walter Lippmann column commenting on Justice recommendations. Congressional calm won't last, however. Storm clouds hvmg over broadcasters on Capitol Hill — and at least one was beginning to break. House Commerce Committee Chmn. Harris (D-Ark.) and his Legislative Oversighters held unscheduled, unpublicized caucus on upcoming payola hearings (Vol. 16:1 pl6). They delayed setting date for start of new headline-promising foray, giving staff more time to get ready for it. But it will come soon. Meanwhile, staffers began sending out flock of subpoenas for financial records of imdisclosed number of "corporations & individuals" — meaning record firms & disc jockeys. Staffers coimted on subpoenaed material alone to keep probe in sensations many weeks. INDEX TO 1959 TV NEWS & PROGRESS: The only handy reference of its kind in the broadcast & electronics industry, our 14-page Index of 1959 news events, technical advances and network, station and manufacturers' activities, accompanies this issue. The Index is our 11th annual edition and a proved invaluable time saver for those moments when you have to know fast what happened, when & where & why. The Index relates to 1959 Newsletters, Special Reports & Factbooks, and we assume you've maintained your copies in a complete file. However, we are preparing bound volumes of our 1959 output, prefaced by the new Index, and if you prefer this all-in-one convenience, we are still taking orders, at $25 per copy. The FCC DROP-IN TECHNICALITIES; FCC came up with 2 new definitions of service areas in its new vhf drop-in proposal (see p. 1) : “Principal City Service” and “Normal Service Area.” Using a new set of 6 propagation curves, the Principal City Service would be 80 dbu for Ch. 2-6, 85 dbu for Ch. 7-13. This, FCC said, would insure an excellent picture to at least 90% of locations at least 90% of the time. Normal service area signal levels are 40 dbu for Ch. 2-6, 50 dbu for Ch. 7-13. To protect existing stations from interference produced by new drop-ins, the Commission said: “Protection equivalent to that insured existing stations under the rules governing minimum separations & maximum antenna heights and powers will be afforded by requiring stations operating at substandard co-channel spacings to suppress radiation toward the existing station to the extent necessary to insure that the ratio of desired-to-undesired signal will not be less than 28 db (offset operation) at any point where such ratio would occur if the new and the existing station were operating with maximum facilities at the minimum spacing permitted in Sec. 3:610 of the rules.” Adjacent-channel separations would be reduced from 60 to 40 miles, and directional antennas with 20 db sup pression would be permitted. FCC engineers made substantial use of TASO’s findings in the new proposal. The report (Docket 13340, Public Notice 60-1) is due to be published in this week’s Federal Register. A limited number of copies are available upon request to the Commission. Copies are also available from the Goetz Co., 1030 20th St. N. W., Washington. Revocation of license of radio KIMN Denver, proposed by FCC because of “vulgar, obscene” broadcasts (Vol. 15:49 p2), was contested by the station last week. It asked the Commission to call off the proposed hearings, asserting the FCC action is barred by the Administrative Procedures Act and the Communications Act and that the “death penalty” of revocation is inappropriate. The station said the proceeding was started by a disgruntled competitor, that the offending employe had been dismissed and that it took “drastic & effective remedial measures to insure that there would be no recurrence of the unfortunate instances of departures from standards of good taste.” Single TV application filed with the FCC last week was for Ch. 13, Hilo, Hawaii, to be operated as a satellite of Henry Kaiser’s KHVH-TV Honolulu. Total pending is now 114 (19 uhf).