How to Start a War

Crosley got into the color TV race last week. It has been licensed to manufacture the "Chromatron" color tube invented by Nobel Prizewinner Ernest O. Lawrence and developed by Paramount Pictures Corp.'s TV labs. Crosley said it already has a pilot line turning out the new tube on a limited scale, and promised a wide range of advantages for its new product: large, rectangular pictures, excellent color definition and easy mass production.

Though Crosley was careful to say that full mass production is still a long way off, the announcement added to the confusion over color that has the industry groggy. The public, thinking that color TV is just around the corner, has shied away from buying black & white sets, and sales have dropped alarmingly. TV dealers are so overloaded that Westinghouse last week chopped prices 28% to 40% on all 21-inch models, and RCA Victor announced a "customer-protection plan." If color TV comes on the market by Jan. 1, 1955, RCA will allow an 80% credit towards a color TV set on every black & white model sold from now on.

The fact is that TV makers feel that sizable production of color sets is at least a year away. No sets are expected to come on the market before mid-1954, and the total industry production is estimated as low as 50,000 and no higher than 200,000 sets the first year. Even then, the bottom price will be around $800, or four times that of bestselling models of black & white sets.

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