Pioneer UHF WHUM-TV, Reading, Pa
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THE AUTHORITATIVE 1PP ti LÒ,1 NEWS SERVICE FOR MANAGEMENT SEP 4 1956 OF THE VISUAL BROADCASTING AND ELECTRONICS ARTS AND INDUSTRIES MARTIN CODEL, Editor and Publisher ¡Ott ALBERT WARREN, Senior Editor ROBERT CADEL, Business Sranager DAVID LACHENBRUCH, Associate Editor GERSHON FISHBEIN, Trade Reports Editor Editorial Associates: Paul Stone, William J. McMahon, Jr. with ELECTRONICS REPORTS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY RADIO NEWS BUREAU WYATT BLDG. WASHINGTON 5, D.C. TELEPHONE STERLING 3.1755 V 0 L. 12: No. 35 SUMMARY- INDEX OF THE WEEK'S NEWS - September 1, 1956 RADIO SET SALES BOOMING, with home sets up 45% and PHILCO EXPANDS OWN SERVICING, expects to have 16 auto radios in comeback. Year's total may reach factory branches by year's end. Motorola's Bob Gal- 14,000,000 -5 -year record. Reasons for boom (p. 1). vin foresees another round of TV price increases (p. 10). DELAY IN ALLOCATIONS proceeding produced by techni- TOP DEFENSE CONTRACTORS of 1955, as ranked by De- cal "anomalies." Comments deadline shifted to Nov. fense Dept., include firms dominant in electronics fields; 15. FCC sets Sept. 20 for big uhf parley (p. 2). GE ranks 2nd, RCA 22nd, Philco 26th (p. 12). UHF WITH OPERATING LOSS of $49,000 first 2 years, WESTERN UNION BUYS into Teleprompter, investing $750,- WEHT in Evansville area, sold with radio for $820,000. 000. With AB -PT it also buys into Wind Tunnel In- Way cleared for CBS & NBC to get added uhf's (p. 3). strument Co., their third such venture (p. 13). HOUSE COMMITTEES RESUME work on TV. Evins com- FLAT TUBE long way off for home TV, Kaiser says. Develop- mittee report includes "hot" CBS -FCC memos. Celler ment for military aircraft still incomplete. Experiments and staff begin sparring with networks (pp. 3-4). with 2 -color & 3 -color types (p. 14). COLORADO'S ONE-MAN "FCC", Gov. Johnson, tells more CROWELL-COLLIER REPORTS financing for Bitner station boosters to stay on, writes FCC chairman mountain purchases, gets FCC approval to take over Harry areas "should be encouraged" to use them (p. 5). Maizlish's KFWB, Hollywood. Many AM transfers (p. 8). THREE VHF DECISIONS weighed by FCC, Jacksonville final- FIRST MOBILE ELECTRONICAM goes to Paramount, Holly- ized, St. Louis & Charlotte postponed. Petitions for wood, DuMont aiming for movie market, claiming in- new channel shifts pile up (p. 5). creased production speed & economies (p. 8). FORTUNE MAGAZINE WRITER finds TV networks, time sold CROSBY VIDEO TAPE project taken over by Minn. Mining cut, inclined to treat some ad agencies as "intrusive & Mfg. Co., which says it has no plans to compete outsiders" and to "push them around" (p. 7). with Ampex now. CBS awaits Ampex deliveries (p. 9). CONVENTION AUDIENCE RATINGS are contradictory, but TORONTO'S CBLT SHIFTS to Ch. 6, claims 1,000,000 more sponsors seem satisfied. Need for some sort of "cap- viewers, many in U. S. Interference with Buffalo's sulization" seen for 1960-but how much? (p. 7). WBEN-TV (Ch. 4) reported. Upcoming stations (p. 9). THE HOME RADIO BOOM-AND REASONS WHY: The continuing vitality of radio set sales this year astonishes everybody in trade who stops to think about it -- especially those who figured TV would leave radio for dead by now. Quite the contrary: all the current evidence is that radio is prospering side by side with TV. With 142,000,000 radios in use (including 35,000,000 auto sets), with 97% of the nation's 49,000,000 households owning at least one radio, and with 74% of them owning TVs, you'd logically expect some slackening in the pace of radio sales. But the simple fact is that home radio sales in first 7 months were some 45% higher than same period year ago -- and, assuming continuation of current upswing in auto pro- duction, industry estimates are for total radio sales of 14,000,000 this year (vs. projected 7,300,000 for TV) . That would be highest for any year since RETMA first started to compile retail radio sales statistics in mid -1951. Radio's peak production was in first full "unfrozen" postwar year of 1947, when 20,000,000 units were made; it's not known how many were sold at retail that year, but trade doesn't expect this output to be approached in foreseeable future. More statistics on the radio sales boom: In first 7 months, about 3,967,000 home radios were sold at retail -- 1,506,000 table models, 1,406,000 portables and 1,054,000 clock. They compare with 2,732,983 sold in the first 7 months of 1955 -- including 1,198,391 table, 840,662 portables, 693,930 clock. For quick comparison, portables were up 67%, clock radios up 52%, table sets up 26%. For all of 1956, one top producer estimates that distributor sales (which vary comparatively little from retail sales) will total 7,800,000: 3,100,000 table COPYRIGHT 1956 BY RADIO NEWS BUREAU www.americanradiohistory.com 2 - models, 2,400,000 portables, 2,300,000 clock. Some other radio makers believe this t,stimate conservative, forecasting up to 8,000,000. Home radio sales at retail last year totaled 6,921,000 -- 3,007,000 tables, 1,879,000 portables, 2,035,000 clock. Auto radios are in special category, keyed to auto production and marketed through non -appliance outlets. Reflecting sharp drop in auto output in spring and early summer, production of auto radios in first 7 months totaled 2,512,216, about 38% below the 4,065,859 turned out in same period year ago. However, there's a current upswing in auto production -- and trade's market men now foresee output of about 6,000,000 auto sets for year, compared to 7,229,594 in 1955. At average retail price of $28, the expected 8,000,000 home radio sales this year should produce dollar volume of about $224,000,000. By contrast, the sale of 7,300,000 TV (at $200 average) represents retail volume of about $1.46 billion.. How explain radio's resurgence? One big radio manufacturer offered these reasons, which seem to match pretty closely the thinking of others in field: (1) Renewed interest by manufacturers in building and styling better products, in manner of auto industry. (2) Distributors and dealers, beset by shrinking TV profits, are giving greater emphasis to radios, where unit prices may be lower but percentage of profit is higher. (3) Hi-fi boom has stimulated sales of higher -quality radios and radio -phono combinations. (4) Little transistor radios, though still expensive, have proven much more popular than expected. (5) Radio has far broader distribution than TV -- sold in drug & jewelry stores and other outlets which far outnumber the 120,000 TV outlets. (6) More money is being spent to advertise and promote radios, and some smaller manufacturers have been able to capture sizable chunks of the radio set market, even against the dominant brand names. ENGINEERING FOULUP DELAYS ALLOCATIONS: Snafu over FCC's engineering proposals in deintermixture rule -making forced FCC this week to postpone deadline for comments from Sept. 10 to Nov. 15, as anticipated (Vol. 12:34), and legal problems involved threaten to become even more complicated. However, they don't affect comments on Commission's all -uhf proposal, for which deadline remains Oct. 1 -- and FCC has set Sept. 20 for organizational meeting to kick off "crash research" program for uhf. Reason for postponing deadline on the 13 channel shifts proposed by FCC is that Assn. of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers pointed out certain tech- nical anomalies in methods Commission specified for computing coverage and interfer- ence (see Special Report, June 30, 1956, for full text). Engineers say these problems can be ironed out easily, but stickler is fact that Commission has introduced concept of computing interference -- without benefit of rule -making -- a vital departure from existing rules. Commission's solution is likely to be initiation of a new rule -making proceeding to set up standards affect- ing interference and coverage, and to let this proceeding run parallel with its de - intermixture rule -making -- hoping the two can be made to jibe. It's entirely pos- sible that whole matter can become tangled in long technical vhf -uhf duel. x x * Calling for big meeting to start uhf stuff, FCC invited 4 representatives each from Assn. of Maximum Service Telecasters (mostly vhf), Committee for Competi- tive TV (mostly uhf), Joint Council on Educational TV, NARTB and RETMA. Commission suggested that a "TV Allocation Research Committee (TARC)" be formed, recommended that RETMA provide chairman (presumably pres. W.R.G. Baker). Commission said that others would be welcomed after TARC is established. TARC should "cooperate with and advise" FCC on whole allocations problem, Commission stated, with objective of finding out whether uhf can do the whole TV job -- and if it can't, determine what can. Commission said group should look into uhf & vhf propagation, transmitters, receivers, antennas, transmission lines, measuring techniques, allocation principles. It reiterated Chairman McConnaughey's suggestion that a non-profit research corpo- ration be formed to cover costs, said it expects industry to supply engineers and equipment. Open meeting is 10 a.m., Sept. 20, Room 7134, McConnaughey presiding. www.americanradiohistory.com -3 - UHF FETCHES $820,000; OTHER TRANSFER DEALS: In the current flurry of station sales deals, it's noteworthy that uhf outlets are often involved -- that property values of at least some of the 96 surviving uhf stations seem to be looking up. Witness the recent sale of WINT (Ch.