Push for Color TV

TV-set makers have pursued their elusive goal of a color-TV set in every living room with a great hue and cry, but the public at large has not joined in. Now the manufacturers have decided that the situation calls for less cry, more hue. This year the industry expects to sell 1,300,000 color sets worth $750 million, 70% more than last year and ten times as many as in 1960. Since that is still far short of black-and-white sales (7,500,000 sets this year), the industry is hard at work pushing for a color breakthrough on several fronts.

From Round to Square. RCA, which until last year was the only U.S. producer of the 21-inch color tube, has announced an $8,000,000 expansion program for its color-tube facilities. Admiral, which complains about the price of the RCA tubes it buys for its sets, will become the sixth U.S. maker to manufacture its own color tubes when its new $12 million factory is finished. National Video, the supplier of Motorola's 23-inch color tubes, is spending $4,000,000 to double its capacity. Sylvania has developed a new color tube with a rare earth phosphor that makes it 40% brighter than others on the market. Last week Zenith introduced its new 25-inch rectangular color tube, which shows more of the transmitted picture, and Philco began pilot production of 21-inch color tubes of its own.

Picture quality and set durability have both been greatly improved, but set prices are still too high for the mass market, generally starting at $400; even the lowest discount price is still about 8280. Sponsors do not want to pay premium color costs (about $10,000 extra for a half-hour show) to reach limited audiences; audiences are not likely to grow dramatically until more color is offered on TV. NBC now schedules 50% of its network programs in color, but CBS broadcasts no regular color programs, ABC only two.

A 90DEG Turn. The industry nonetheless considers color's triumph over black-and-white inevitable. Holdout CBS has invested $13 million in new color facilities, and its nearly completed broadcast center in Manhattan has been designed to accommodate a full schedule of color programs. Zenith and Admiral, following the trend in black-and-white to smaller screens, are developing 19-inch color tubes, and several companies are experimenting with 16-inch sets. Most of the new tubes cast images on the screen at a 90DEG angle instead of the usual 70DEG, can thus be made shorter to fit into cabinets less bulky than present TV sets. The smaller tubes and the proliferation of manufacturers should also help to bring color TV prices down.

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