At Home & Abroad

U.S. radio's big news of 1947 was television. Television grew--and behaved--as outlandishly as an adolescent boy. More than 149,000 sets were sold; nine new telecasting stations were operating. But programs (except for sportscasts, a television natural) were mostly pretty, clumsy; and the first advertising binge had left the youngster with a bad commercial breath.

Yet it was a surprisingly mild binge. NBC, which makes the most money of all U.S. telecasters, spent $3,500,000 on television in 1947, according to Variety, got back only $800,000 from advertisers.

British television has had a straighter, though slower growth than its U.S. cousin. In all Britain, there is only one telecasting station (in London's Alexandra Palace), and there are only about 30,000 television sets, mostly in the London area.

BBC television puts out three hours a day of newscasts, ballet, interviews, boxing, short films and full-length revivals (e.g., Marlene Dietrich in Blue Angel), and at least two plays a week. If only in technique, the plays are ahead of most things U.S. television has done. With no sponsors to worry about (the government foots the bill), BBC can experiment.

This year BBC's television unit will begin what Program Director Cecil McGivern calls "the real guts of television" --a series of documentary studies of coal production, infantile paralysis, housing, other problems. McGivern believes that television is "far more effective than the written word, the spoken word, or the movies. ... It will be the biggest social force ever."

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