"I've been waiting 19½ years for this moment, and now it's here." With these words, Zenith Radio's gravel-voiced President Eugene F. McDonald Jr. this week began a trial run of his much-delayed Phonevision. The testing ground: 300 selected Chicago homes.
An ambitious effort to arrange a financially happy marriage between TV and Hollywood, Phonevision gives TV set owners a chance to order movies by telephone, at $1 each. Once the order is placed, a simple gadget attached to the TV set and connected to the home telephone unscrambles the movie on the TV screen. Hollywood collects its profit and the set owner...