Radio: Stratovision

The big bugaboo in television’s dream of a coast-to-coast network is the formidable fact that the world is round. Until television beams are bent, reception will remain limited to line-of-sight distances which seldom exceed 50 miles.

Last week Westinghouse Electric Corp. came up with an idea: instead of building higher & higher towers, why not transmit television from planes flying high in the sky? Westinghouse engineers talked it over with Glenn L. Martin Co., which proposed to build B-29-sized planes for the job. Ground studios would beam programs to the planes, which, at 30,000 feet, could then transmit the programs to receivers within a 211-mile radius. Only 14 planes would have to be in the air to service 78% of the U.S.

Westinghouse estimates that it would cost $1,000-an-hour to operate each such stratovision station, and considers that dirt cheap. Stratovision, which is Westinghouse’s name for the scheme, will probably be tested in the fall. Engineers are sure that it will revolutionize television, and possibly FM radio too. Not so sure is NBC’s President Niles Trammell. Said he: “If it works it will be revolutionary.”