Television: Pleasant Sound

To the 50 FM set owners in southern New Mexico’s clear and dry Tularosa Basin, Max Rothman’s converted chicken coop with the homemade broadcast tower was the best radio station on the air. Because Max, a chubby, balding man of 40, worked at nearby Holloman Air Force Base (like all 50 FM owners), his wife Sima handled the daytime broadcasts, wrote copy, answered the phone and managed to look after four children between platters and chatter. As feeding time grew near, the squalls of her baby son often punctuated her spot announcements, but nobody seemed to mind. After work (designing instruments for rockets and balloons) Max took over the control board; on weekends he canvassed merchants to sell time, traveled about to help install FM sets.

The Rothmans refused to go in for the twanging cowboy laments that flooded the air waves of the region, and for this, many farmers came from miles around to shake Max’s hand. Says he: “A lot of them told me they had never heard music like this before.” The combination of Max and FM proved so fertile that now, two years after the Rothmans began flooding the basin with Beethoven, Schoenberg, Saint-Saëns and other good music. FCC is letting him branch out with an AM radio station as well. And this week the station’s 36 stockholders—mostly old friends—will meet with Max to hear a cheerful report: during December, its first month of both AM and FM broadcasting, the station grossed a record $3,000.

Reward did not come too soon. Max had poured a lot of sweat and faith into his old chicken coop; he borrowed heavily from family and friends, got help from another hi-fi lover, Space Surgeon Colonel Paul Stapp (TIME, Sept. 12, 1955), who lent him much of his big collection of LP records, is now a stockholder. Rothman traded radio time for food and furniture, and Sima, an amateur artist, illustrated the monthly programs. In return for job printing, the Alamogordo newspaper got free newscasts. To pay for delivery of a fifth child, Max installed FM equipment in the obstetrician’s house, acquiring another listener in the bargain. After seven months he quit his job at the missiles development center to spend his time signing up new customers and “keeping people aware of us.”

By last week some 10,000 FM fans were well aware of the Rothmans, and joining them were many of the estimated 70,000 AM set owners scattered across the basin to El Paso. Looking forward at last to some generously profitable years, Max was grateful to his FM followers. “Now everybody seems proud of the station,” said he. “Possessive even.”

For the first time since the advent of TV, restrained programing of the type exploited by Max Rothman is on the upswing all over the U.S. Thanks in large part to the nation’s hi-fi hysteria, the air waves now support 537 FM stations (against 521 TV stations) for the estimated 13 million sets in use. In the past two months FCC has made 22 grants for new FM stations, and 47 more are under construction. Several, like WFLN in Philadelphia, WEAW in Evanston, Ill., have expanded to AM to make their outlets better-paying propositions. Biggest single FM boom is taking place in Los Angeles, which boasts, as of this week, 20 FM stations. Both Lincoln and Continental are advertising FM dashboard sets, and a fortnight ago Mutual Broadcasting System announced plans to acquire seven FM stations, the legal limit on single ownership. Boston’s WCRB, which pioneered in stereophonic sound, is offering a record 128 hours of concert music a week, and Westinghouse Broadcasting Co.’s four new “FM only” outlets are making a pitch to advertisers who prefer “a rifle shot to a shotgun blast.” Says Westinghouse President Donald McGannon: “FM is at last on the march, and that day may not be too far distant when our country will have three separate major media for broadcast entertainment and advertising: TV, AM radio and FM radio.”