The Busy Air

P:In Limestone, Me., the Air Force formally dedicated the nation's smallest TV station. A one-camera setup with a maximum range of three miles, the station serves the remote, 15,000-man air base with kinescopes of regular shows (the commercials are eliminated) and with live Air Force talent. Similar TV stations are planned for armed forces stations in such isolated overseas areas as French Morocco, the Azores, Iceland and Saudi Arabia.

P:In Manhattan, NBC demonstrated a new method for giving freedom of movement to TV singers. Soprano Joan Diener, instead of being forced to stand near a microphone boom in order to be heard, was able to move at will in a TV studio by means of a tiny concealed microphone, transmitter and antenna. The antenna went around her waist as a belt, the transmitter was attached invisibly to her back, and the mike was hidden in her bodice. Total weight of the equipment: 8 oz.

P:In Hollywood, Funnyman Eddie Cantor deserted live television for TV films.Cantor will make 39 TV films annually, as well as an equal number of recorded radio programs, for Ziv Television Programs, Inc. His return over the next seven years will be "in excess of $9,000,000."

P: In London, a bill for commercial television passed the House of Commons by a vote of 291-265, and now faces the House of Lords. In order to squeeze through Parliament, the bill had been so adulterated that commercial TVmen complained that it combined the worst features of government and commercial TV. Grumbled the London Daily Mirror: "It is all snaffle, bit and blinkers, but no horse."

P:In Berlin, the United States Government radio station, RIAS, began its sixth year of broadcasting a program called Suchdienst (Searching Service). Its purpose: to help war victims find relatives and friends in East Germany. Since 1948, RIAS has put on the air the names of more than 50,000 missing persons--mostly children, D.P.s or P.W.s--and received 91,700 letters. Last week RIAS and Suchdienst announced that they had found their 5,000th missing person behind the Iron Curtain--a lost son who had been reported missing in action at Stalingrad eleven years ago.

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