Too Early for Television?

Rubric for television and its No. 1 sponsor, big Radio Corp. of America, was last February's leap-year day. On the 20th of February, after seven days of public hearings on the technique and possibilities of television and a month's deliberation, the Federal Communications Commission gave RCA and lesser telecasters a history-making go-ahead.

Clothed under early New Deal blanket legislation with mighty authority over the air, FCC announced that limited commercial telecasting could begin on Sept. 1 --i. e., that advertising sponsors could pay program production costs, leave telecasters out of pocket only for their air time and technological expense.

Quick to jump at the opportunity was RCA, which has sunk more than $10,000,000 in television development, thinks it has the foundation for a great new industry with millions of sets in U. S. homes, with millions of dollars in created income for entertainers, salesmen, writers, technicians, factory workers. To its factory in Camden, N. J. went orders to step up production of receivers, then averaging about seven a day. To its sales department went orders to get ready to sell 25,000 television sets because RCA: 1) was ready to begin taking some revenue from its pioneering, 2) needed more than the 2,000 sets then in use in the New York metropolitan district to develop an advertiser's market.

Natural but catastrophic was RCA's next step: a full-page advertisement in Manhattan newspapers announcing regular program service, advertising its highest-priced home receiver ($395). Two days later the blow struck: an FCC order summarily suspending its permission for commercial telecasting. Its reason: "television promotional activities" by RCA. Television sets should not be foisted on a large public, FCC implied, until there has been more improvement in the quality of transmission. This week, FCC begins further hearings "to determine whether ... the achievement of higher standards for television transmission are being unduly retarded by ... the Radio Corporation of America. ..."

Stunned by FCC's foray in the field of consumer protection, RCA was mum, said nothing about its own willingness to stake its reputation that television was ready to go. Less than mum were editorial writers who thundered at what seemed to be arbitrary restriction of a new and promising industry. To answer them lean, balding FCC Chairman James Lawrence Fly last week took to the air. Gist of his defense: if RCA's transmission methods should be superseded by technological developments (now being tested by Philco, DuMont and other RCA competitors), its sets would be useless, purchasers might have to discard them as obsolescent. To make his statement

Annapolis-Man Fly took time on the Mutual chain, later decided to broadcast at the same time on NBC's Red network (owned by RCA). Wryly RCA canceled Molle Shaving Cream's Tuesday night "Battle of the Sexes" program to let its listeners hear what Mr. Fly had to say.

Approximate cost (in advertising revenue) to RCA for a spanking on its own net work: $10,000.

At week's end, FCC came in for a spanking itself. This time the paddle was wielded by one of its own members, Tunis Augustus Macdonough Craven, only radio engineer on the commission. In a letter to Minnesota's Senator Lundeen, Engineer Craven (who dissented from the cancellation order) labeled the reasoning of his colleagues "absurd on its face." "Nothing can stop scientific research and technical progress in a free democracy," wrote he, "if incentive is not discouraged by government. ... In my opinion, the technique of television has advanced to the stage where an initial public trial is entirely justified. . . . There is no need ... for a commission in Washington to substitute its judgment for that of the public."

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