Sight Unseen

Customer: Can you demonstrate the [television] set?

Clerk: No. It's not connected. Anyway, there are no programs on.

Despite such sale-killing conversations, television sets were selling like white shirts in New York and Chicago department stores last week. RCA-Victor put its first sets on sale (table models selling for $350 plus a $50 maintenance fee), sold over $1 million worth. Allen B. DuMont Laboratories also put its sets, running from $750 to $2,495, on demonstration recently, has already taken orders for $3 million worth.

RCA hoped that last week's public reception of its sets might influence the Federal Communications Commission to decide in favor of its black & white television, rather than Columbia Broadcasting System's color televising. The more sets RCA sells, the harder FCC will find it to decide in favor of CBS's color, which RCA sets cannot receive. If RCA can force black & white television now, it hopes to capture a big chunk of the market, hold it till it is ready with its own electronic color, some five years hence.

General Electric, Philco, Farnsworth and U.S. Television will soon put their sets on the market. There was no doubt that television, of one kind or another, was finally on its way. In September alone, 3,242 sets were produced v. a total of 225 in the entire first eight months of 1946.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.