Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1963)

8-TELEVISION DIGEST NOVEMBER 4. 1963 sense of the word. However, it’s not entirely a one-way street. Some financial interests have helped to create this situation by chargir^ excessive rates.” He believes situation has national ramifications, will result in action in other states, particularly those with constitutional provisions similar to Nebraska's. Some 36 other states have some form of timesale legislation or doctrine and at least 3— Missouri, Washington, Wisconsin— have constitutional provisions forbidding establishment of special interest rates for special products or groups. ”I believe that other states will look into their situations to see if they actuaUy have loans instead of time-sale provisions," Nelson, of the Nebraska attorney general's office also told us. AUen Rogers of National Credit Office told us "Fve been talking with some of the big financial companies about this, and while there is some concern about it spreading, it's just too early to teU if it wiU be a national thing." However, he pointed out, "when you get right down to it you can interpret any credit transaction as a loan. Your wife's revolving credit at the department store could be interpreted as a loan, too." GECC's Newton also believes Nebraska case "could have national repercussions. D; aU depends on what the other state courts do. What's especially interesting here is that the Nebraska court in its last case didn't treat with the constitutionality of the state law. Rather, it ruled that if you add a finance price to the cash price, it has to be within the state's usury law. This runs coimter to doctrine of the other states." If no charge is made in Nebraska's present law, he said, "the only way a dealer wiU be able to operate will be to get banks and finance companies to finance under the smaH loans law. However, he'll get none of the rate participation and he'U lose that portion of the finance charge that he used to get. His gross margin will then be affected, and he'll have to increase prices. The net result wiU be that time buyers will pay interest on a higher purchase price." Interestingly, Nebraska court action was foreseeable 4 years ago. ’When Time-Sale Act was passed in 1959," Nelson told us, "the attorney general gave as his opinion that it represented a loan action and was unconstitutional." Newton agreed; "There were ample warnings that the court might declare the Act unconstitutional." FM RADIO— 5 MILLION SETS THIS YEAR; FM market this year is bigger than most people even dream it is. Careful survey of every available source of reliable information indicates that production & imports of FM receiving devices in 1963 will exceed 5 million units. This is conservative estimate. It represents increase of nearly 2 million over 1962. Good FM business this year, as uncovered in our inquiry, has prompted us to increase substantially the forecast which we made last Jan. that 3.9 million FM receiving devices could be sold this year (Vol. 3:1 p8). By "FM receiving devices" we mean anything that will pick up FM broadcast stations —table radios, phono or TV combinations, component timers, etc. We have labeled our current estimates "production," but in view of their conservatism, actual retail sales may well approach or reach 5-miUion mark. Biggest percentage increases from 1962 to 1963 are in auto FM and imports. Both figures are rock-bottom estimates. Auto figures largely reflect estimates of original -equipment new-car market, with very small allowance made for after -market. Import figures come as big surprise. They are based on actual Japanese FM radio production for first 8 months of 1963, which are projected to indicate total Japanese production of at least 1.5 million FM sets for year. Since Japan currently has no regular FM programming and virtually no domestic sales, it has been estimated that perhaps 90% of Japanese FM sets are being exported to U. S. To be on safe side, we used 70% figure and eliminated projected Dec. 1963 production figures from our import estimate entirely. Also ignored were FM imports from other countries (except in component tuneij category), which may well be substantial. For 1964, our FM estilnate is 6.4 million sets, again extremely conservative. Imports are bluest unknown quantity in this equation. If Japan has regular FM broadcasting next year (and therefore a . domestic market for FM), Japanese FM radio exports to U. S. could well exceed domestic production ^ in over-all table -clock-portable category.