COMMUNICATIONS: Color Line

The growth of the infant television industry has been stunted by a prodigious argument over its care & feeding. Should television broadcasts be in black & white or in color? Last week, after 14 weeks of weighing the testimony, the Federal Communications Commission finally ruled in favor of black & white.

So for the next four or five years, perhaps longer, anyone who wanted to buy a television set would have to be content with a black & white receiver. The argument before FCC was highly technical. But the issues were dollars & cents. The real question was whether Radio Corp. of America—and NBC—or the Columbia Broadcasting System got a head start, and possible control, of the lusty young television baby.

Until last fall, giant RCA was well on its way to raising baby its own way. It controlled many a patent on black & white television broadcasting and reception, had a huge investment in manufacturing black & white receivers.

Then CBS, which spent some $2,000,000 on a color system stepped in. CBS asked FCC to grant it a license to televise in color. RCA, which had nearly $100,000,000 at stake, opposed this.

Black & White Ahead. CBS argued that its “sequential” system* was commercially feasible. Its sets could be made for only 10 to 30% more than black & white ones (actually, CBS presented no plans to have them mass-produced). But the most potent argument of CBS’s President Frank Stanton was that color was the only thing which could really get public interest. The public could take black & white or leave it alone. (Even now there are only about 10,000 black & white receivers in use.) But the public would go for television color as it had gone for color in movies.

RCA’s Executive Vice President Charles B. Jolliffe had all the answers handy. CBS, said he in effect, was experimenting up a blind alley with its system because of its mechanical nature. It did not have the possibilities for improvement which RCA’s electronic system had. (But RCA does not expect its system to be commercially feasible for four or five years at least.) Furthermore, present black & white receivers could not receive broadcasts under the CBS system of color television. But when, and if, RCA’s color is ready for the market, Jolliffe promised that RCA would have a gadget which would easily convert color into black & white for reception on black & white sets.

Enterprise to the Rear. In its decision, FCC stuck close to potent RCA’s arguments. FCC was not satisfied that the CBS system was “as good as can be expected … in the foreseeable future.” And, added FCC, it could not give CBS a license and let the public pass on color because “. . . there are not enough frequencies available . . . for more than one color television system.”

Many a radioman agreed with FCC, even though the decision was bound to delay color. CBS’s Stanton said sadly that CBS could not afford to spend much more cash on color. Black & white would have the field to itself, and RCA would be out ahead. (It now manufactures most of the sets being turned out.)

But there were those who thought that FCC had not done too well, that some way should have been found to let CBS test the public’s reaction to color. As the New York Times snapped: “The public will wonder what has become of free enterprise. It will also wonder if television must be monopolized by the company that has had the foresight to develop a system of color transmission and reception which will be acceptable to the FCC.”

*The sequential system uses a fast revolving disc with colored sectors. They cause the images to appear on the screen in red, green and blue, one color after another, but so fast that the eye blends them into one single, many-colored picture.