Long Live the Queen!

Born of more than a quarter century of competition, the rivalry between CBS and NBC is a Hatfield-McCoy affair, with no favors asked or given. This year it will reach its height in TV coverage of the coronation. To get ready for the shooting, each network has set up its own command post in London. NBC is so security-minded that important transatlantic messages are sent in code to keep them away from CBS signal-stealers. Boasts NBC's Assistant Producer Robert Graff: "We're going to hit them with every barrel we've got. We're going to be the first and the best." CBS News Director Sig Mickelson, serenely confident, says: "NBC started too late. They're six weeks behind us in all their plans."

Off the Moon. The cost of covering the coronation for both networks will be nearly $500,000, with General Motors bankrolling NBC and Willys-Overland helping to pick up the tab for CBS. For a while, network circles buzzed with rumors of prodigies: NBC was planning to transmit a live story of the coronation by bouncing TV images off the moon, and thence across the Atlantic; CBS was ready to hurl its film from London to the U.S. by the latest thing in guided missiles. As of this week, both networks were apparently ready to settle for plain jet planes.

As the film is shot in London, it will be rushed by motorcycle, car and helicopter to the airport, where three pooled Canberra jets will be standing by to take off for Goose Bay, Labrador. Last week NBC and CBS representatives in Washington tried unsuccessfully to wheedle additional jets from the U.S. Air Force. Instead, NBC will load its films at Goose Bay into a souped-up PSI flown by Racing Pilot Stan Reaver. CBS, not to be outdone, will put its films into a PSI flown by Speed Pilot Joe DeBona. Both planes will race for Boston, and the films will be rushed on the air on arrival.

By that time, televiewers will already have seen a great many still pictures of the coronation. These can be flashed by radiophoto from England in less than ten minutes and put on the air a few minutes later. NBC has moved up Dave Garroway's Today show from its usual 7 a.m. E.D.T. to 5:30 a.m., and will install a new machine called Mufax, to add movement and continuity to the still pictures.

Into the Blue. A second plane race is scheduled by CBS and NBC when the ceremonies at Westminster Abbey are ended. The object in this race will be to get on the air in the U.S. with the first text and picture roundup of the coronation. NBC has chartered a Pan American DC-6 which it hopes will fly nonstop from London to Boston in nine hours, carrying Commentator Henry Cassidy.

Half of the plane's 82 seats have been ripped out to give working space to film technicians and scriptwriters who will edit and process the film in flight. It will be telecast that night at 10:30 E.D.T.

The rival CBS plane is a chartered BOAC Stratocruiser, also stripped down to make room for editing tables, splicers and other equipment. Commentators Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite are expected to produce in mid-flight a tightly edited, hour-long documentary that will steal the show from NBC. Says Sig Mickelson: "Ed Murrow and the coronation are a natural combination." Over the Cliff. The ABC and Du Mont networks are taking things a good deal easier. Du Mont, which has not yet found a sponsor, plans no novelties but insists: "We are definitely in the picture."ABC's News Director John Madigan says: "I don't think we're going to make a race for it -- you just can't get enough out of it to be worth the cost." At week's end, even CBS's Sig Mickelson was having some second thoughts about the rivalry with NBC. "How much further we'll go to continue this impossible competition, I don't know," he said, wearily. "It's like two kids saying: 'I can stand closer to the edge of the cliff than you can.' "

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