FMNet

The first sizable network of commercial FM stations made its bow last Sunday night. Having bowed, it bowed out again; for it was not yet big enough to stay with the grownups. But its first appearance was a notable event.

Parent antennae for the broadcast were those of Manhattan's W71NY, for whose brief dedicatory hoopla the network was hooked together. This station, owned by AM station WOR, became New York City's first full-time commercial FM outlet last April, but its power was inadequate until it switched, last Sunday, to a new 10,000-watt transmitter. For the occasion W71NY engineers used a beam of light to carry part of the program from the studio building, on Broadway, to the transmitter, atop a Madison Avenue skyscraper. Guests at the transmitter saw the aimed beam shining like a sunken star three-quarters of a mile away, its twinkling translated into music by the photo-electric target.

The network itself was a purely ethereal one, not dependent on the telephone wires that bind together such networks as NBC, CBS, Mutual. From Madison Avenue with the greatest of ease W71NY's strong little 7-meter waves leaped through the air to W2XMN, at Alpine, NJ. Thence the program was relayed southwestward to Philadelphia's W53PH, northward to Hartford's W65H. Hartford handed it on to W43B near Boston, thence to W39B on Mt. Washington, and W47A, Schenectady. No jump in this instantaneous relay was much more than 100 miles, but the seven broadcasting stations reached nearly all the eastern seaboard from Maine to Maryland.

Though it functioned only three and a half hours, the network demonstrated that without any telephone line capable of transmitting FM's high-fidelity sound, FM's static-free reception makes radio relaying possible. Only three of the stations (Philadelphia, Boston, Mt. Washington) were official members of the cooperative "American Network" that shrewd, visionary John Shepard III of New England's AM Yankee Network has been trying for the last year to weave. But there was obviously no reason why in time there should not be 40 or 50. If high-fidelity telephone wires for long hauls were now practical, five other FM stations of the American Network could have taken part in the broadcast: Rochester, Columbus, Detroit, Milwaukee and Nashville.

Five sponsors bought time ($222 per half-hour) on a program that competed for listeners with Helen Hayes, Charlie McCarthy and other Sunday evening radio stars. Publicity aside, the investment was probably sound. A year ago there were not more than 15,000 FM receivers in the entire country; last week there were nearly 35,000 in Manhattan alone and about 150,000 in the U.S. Some 20 manufacturers now sell them, and prices have gradually come down until a good combination AM and FM receiver can be had for $67.50.

A year ago there were no commercial FM stations in operation; last week 22 were in operation and 39 more had been authorized by the Federal Communications Commission. In at the beginning of FM broadcasting, FCC has smiled on a development for which it could make all the rules. Of the four national chains, Mutual has shown the most interest, as evidenced by WOR's pioneering in Manhattan with W71NY. But CBS, already in the business in Chicago, starts transmission this week over its Manhattan station W67NY--introducing big-time competition that should improve FM's generally backward programming.

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