COMMUNICATIONS: TV Takes Over

With grunts of delight, Wall Street last week woke up to the wonders of television. Out poured a dozen market letters puffing TV. Jacquin, Bliss & Stanley recommended television stocks because they offered "romance possibilities" and had "the greatest sex appeal." What was making the Street goggle was the way TV had come to the rescue of radio makers—and in the nick of time.

Dollar sales of radios had slumped badly. They were running more than 25% lower than last year, with no hope of betterment as dealers slashed prices to unload. What made up for this slump was the increase in television production. At close to 15,000 sets a week, it was still far behind the enormous demand.

To meet the clamor for TV sets, Philco Corp., which was already turning out 4.000 sets a week, would step up to 8,000 a week in the next few months, enough to make the company's 1948 output greater than the entire industry's last year (175,000 sets). Philco's President William Balderston put the revolution in balance-sheet terms: ". . . Our dollar output of television receivers . . . will exceed our radio production in the latter part of the year."

Revolutionizing the Revolution. TV makers were busily adding to their lines. R.C.A. was in quantity production of a bucket-shaped set (see cut) which projected life-size pictures. Price: $2,650 plus $250 installation charge. Belmont Radio Corp., a subsidiary of Raytheon Manufacturing Co., announced a set with a framed screen that could be hung on the wall like a picture, with extra screens for televiewing in other rooms of a house. Once more the industry revised its production figures upward; it now expects to turn out more than 750,000 sets this year. Dr. Courtnay Pitt, economist for Philco, predicted an increase to 1,500,000 next year, 2,500,000 in 1950, a total of 5,000,000 sets in use by the beginning of 1951.

The revolution, in fact, was so solid that Zenith Radio Corp.'s President Eugene F. McDonald Jr. decided that it was time to revolutionize the revolution. He said his company had tested and would soon market a set that would make "every television receiver on the market today . . . obsolete," Further, said McDonald, the set would be equipped with phonevision, a gadget by which televiewers could get television programs over phone lines (TIME, July 14,1947). Scoffed one competitor: "Zenith is trying to obscure its late entry into television receiver production by promoting ... a service which does not exist and which has not even been authorized by the Federal Communications Commission."

Pay in Advance. Was the growing giant paying off for stations? Said Sidney Strotz, vice president in charge of NBC's western division: everyone "faces terrific losses for the first few years and those who say they are making money now are just kidding themselves."

Sponsorship too was far from paying off. In a survey last week, Manhattan's Lennen & Mitchell ad agency found that the costs of many TV programs were "utterly out of line" by radio standards because of the comparatively small audience. But, the agency said, "in homes owning both television and radio sets . . . outstanding radio programs offer only weak competition even to mediocre or poor television shows."