Radio: The Red Network

• Share

In Moscow, a 17-inch TV set costs less than a new suit of clothes. The catch: a new suit is priced at 1,600 rubles ($400), some $75 more than a TV set.

Even so, reports CBS News Correspondent Daniel Schorr, just back from four months in the Soviet Union, television is "booming," and Russia now ranks third in number of TV sets, behind the U.S. and Great Britain. Moscow itself has 700,000 sets, and antennas bristle not only from modern apartment buildings but even over the sagging wooden huts in the city's outskirts. Red workers can afford to buy sets because—though salaries are low —all adult members of a family usually have jobs, and some money can be saved because rents are cheap and medical and many educational expenses are paid by the state.

Telecasts begin at 7 p.m., with a 20-minute children's program featuring a plump woman in a peasant dress who sits in a chair telling a fairy story. Despite the dull camerawork, says Schorr, "she was a good actress and told the story warmly and simply." Next, in Schorr's monitoring, came an excerpt from a play called Red Clouds. The plot: a young man is torn between the revolutionary fervor of 1905 and the pious exhortations of his father, an Orthodox priest; he breaks away from the "evil influence of religion," curses his father, goes off to join the workers' revolt.

About one night a week, Russian viewers are treated to full-length, live ballet, drama or opera. Three cameras are used in these broadcasts, but during intermissions they remain fixed on the closed curtains of the stage. The TV audience can then have tea or vodka. New feature films are run on TV within ten days of their appearing in Moscow movie houses. A surprising once-a-week feature is 30 minutes of U.S. newsreels, supplied to Soviet TV by Hearst's Telenews Films. They emphasize baby parades and weight-lifting contests.

A Russian viewer pays his government 10 rubles ($2.50) a year for electricity for his set and 48 rubles ($12) as a program charge.