Radio: At the End of the Rainbow

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Back in the out-at-elbow days of the depression '30s, a young Hungarian engineer named Peter Goldmark tried unsuccessfully to get a job with Radio Corp. of America. About the same time, an equally obscure Ohio researcher named Frank Stanton was brushed off with a form letter when he wrote to RCA's subsidiary, NBC.

For a total investment of $100 a week RCA could have hired both men and saved itself many a future headache. Today, Frank Stanton is president of Columbia Broadcasting System and Peter Goldmark is CBS's top color-television engineer. Between them, they have led a series of determined assaults on RCA's vast, multimillion-dollar manufacturing, recording and broadcasting empire, are CBS's top men today in a serious threat to RCA's supremacy in television. Objective of their campaign: to sell the U.S. public CBS's brand of color television.

Committed Battalions. During Stanton's presidency, CBS first stole a march on RCA Victor by launching the 33⅓ r.p.m. long-playing record. At the end of 1948, CBS launched a full-scale talent raid on NBC, and captured such topflight entertainers as Jack Benny, Amos 'n' Andy, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Edgar Bergen, Red Skelton. Last October, CBS won what seemed at the time to be its biggest victory of all: a 5-to-2 decision by the Federal Communications Commission in favor of CBS's color TV over the rival systems of RCA and California's Color Television Inc. Last week CBS began publicly demonstrating its color process to eager thousands in Manhattan, announced plans to have similar daily demonstrations set up in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Chicago and either Cleveland or Detroit.

With the FCC's decision, jubilant CBS hoped that the color war was over and that profits could be reaped. Sponsors were eager to underwrite color programs; more than 50,000 requests for tickets to the first week of demonstrations had poured in. On the executive 20th floor of CBS's Manhattan office building there were happy visions of $50 million or so in royalties as CBS-licensed color sets streamed from the nation's assembly lines.

Then RCA counterattacked. RCA's Board Chairman David Sarnoff, no man to break away from any fight, denounced the FCC decision as "scientifically unsound and against the public interest," ordered battalions of RCA lawyers, publicity men and engineers into the fray. In Chicago, Sarnoff stopped the CBS victory march dead in its tracks by getting a federal court order suspending the FCC decision until three judges can pass on its merits (TIME, Nov. 27). In practice, this means that CBS may telecast in color, but only at its own expense. Until the court decides, no CBS color programs may be sponsored.

Question Box. The fierce struggle between the corporate giants still goes on, but it has traveled from the front pages high into the legal stratosphere of the courts. Most people were less interested in the sounds of business strife than in a few straight answers to a few simple questions. They wanted to know: What is color TV like? And when can they see it in their homes? And is CBS color really "mechanical" and already out of date? And just what is all the shooting about?