Television: Getting It Taped

President Eisenhower took his inaugural oath last week twice within half an hour—or so it looked to millions of viewers on CBS and NBC. The trick was done not by mirrors but their electronic equivalent: the new Videotape Recorder, a 900-lb. machine that captures images as well as sound on magnetic tape and can play them back instantly—or when ever the user wants them—with fidelity approaching the original picture. It was the first time that TV had used Videotape in covering the news, but its experimental use in the few weeks since the networks got the machines from California's Ampex Corporation* has persuaded broadcasters that it is the peephole to a whole new televista.

Ampex's first big job will be to carry taped versions of live New York network shows to Western time zones so they can appear everywhere at the same hour. The tape pictures will be easier and cheaper to produce than the fuzzy, hastily developed Kinescopes now used for the pur pose. The tape needs no processing, can be erased and re-used up to 100 times.

First to order the machines, CBS pioneered last month in taping its Douglas Edwards news program for replay on the West Coast. Last week, after the inaugural, NBC began taping Today, Home and Tonight for the West. Both networks have also begun using tape to record complete shows in advance—NBC with Truth or Consequences, and CBS with one or two hours of the Arthur Godfrey Show so that fans will not languish entirely without the real Arthur while he goes on a five-week vacation to Africa. Among its advantages, the tape does away with waiting for "rushes" to see if retakes are necessary: immediate playback ensures prompt correction of errors.

However, tape will lag somewhat in replacing film for much TV production because, so far at least, it cannot be edited as flexibly. Also, its dramatic possibilities for swift visual news coverage will not be fully realized until lighter, more mobile machines can be built to accompany newsmen. Closer at hand is the prospect of great savings in heavy overtime pay now shelled out by broadcasters for night and weekend operations. Tape should enable them to shoot most of their broadcasting schedule in normal weekday working hours. Across the U.S., independent stations as well as the networks have given Ampex orders for no of the recorders at $45,000 each.