CBS Muddles Through

An actress strolled into a CBS television studio in Manhattan last week, eyed a motley crew of amateur technicians assembled for rehearsal of her daytime serial. "Which one of you," she asked facetiously, "is Mr. Paley?" CBS's Board Chairman William S. Paley was not there to lend a hand with the show, but he might have been. In eight cities across the U.S. where CBS owns TV and radio stations, some 1,300 members of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers had walked out, abandoning cameras, microphone booms, control panels and projectors. Quipped a studio wag: "CBS now means the Confused Broadcasting System!"

Bloopers & Booms. But as the week wore on, there was only slight confusion. Months earlier, CBS's Manhattan headquarters had held quickie training courses for about 300 executive-level staffers. As soon as the I.B.E.W. men left their posts, their amateur replacements poured into the breach. In Los Angeles, CBS Radio's vice president of network programs, Howard Barnes, pitched in as engineer on a radio drama; in Manhattan, William B. Lodge, another v.p., assisted at the network's master control board. Publicity men, time salesmen, casting directors and accountants leaped to unaccustomed tasks, in some cases worked 17-hour days.

Many programs predictably muddled through bloopers born of the green crews' clumsiness and uncertainty. Boom dollies were knocked over; commercials and credits were run twice, or upside down, or not at all; sound faded away or leaked sudden bursts of studio chatter and laughter. A few shows, regularly broadcast live, were replaced by film substitutes. But most programs--and the strike--rolled on as scheduled.

Tape & Technicians. The strikers professed to be uninterested in CBS's offer of a $185.50 weekly minimum wage unless it was accompanied by a tighter job-security clause in their new contract. But behind the talk of security was a looming new threat to their jobs: video tape, the electronic wonder that can record both TV's sounds and images on a magnetized plastic strip. Unlike film, such tape needs no processing, can reproduce what it has heard and seen--a second or a century later (TIME, Feb. 4, 1957). The reproduced image on the TV screen is far superior to film, and distinguishable from live shows only by experts.

The union's fear is that video taping will largely replace live broadcasting from studios and the I.B.E.W. crews that such broadcasts employ. They further worry that the taping will be taken over by outside companies that do not employ I.B.E.W. technicians. Negotiators for CBS and the union began wrangling in Washington at week's end, with a federal mediator on hand to keep them tuned in to each other.

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