O Say, Can We See?

How good will television be, when the U.S. gets television? CBS brought up the question last week.

Television standards, said CBS, were fixed by FCC three years ago, and remain unchanged. If they continue so, postwar television will not be in a position to take advantage of the fact that the war has stimulated electronics to the point where a much clearer television image is almost a certainty. To get these war-born improvements into commercial television, CBS proposes that the radio industry write off the $20,000,000 it has already-spent, that owners of the 7,000 U.S. television receivers scrap them, and that television start afresh with the wartime improvements. CBS thinks such a write-off should be considered now before any more money is spent on prewar television.

It was all very well for CBS to talk: it was RCA-NBC, General Electric and others who were holding the television bag. They manufacture equipment; CBS does not. Last week their spokesman. Television Broadcasters Assn. Inc., put CBS's proposal "in the realm of speculation," announced that present standards were good enough for a postwar start.

FCC, which will have to decide the matter, was also heard from. Said Commissioner E. K. Jett: "In my opinion there will be two systems of television in the future: 1) a system patterned along the lines of the presently recognized commercial system; 2) a vastly improved system of television based on new development.

"This will require that programs be transmitted simultaneously under both sets of standards when the new system is ready. . . In this way the public's investment in receiving equipment will be protected in that all programs may be received either with a receiving set of present design or one of future design to accommodate the new system."

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