At the End of the Rainbow

(See Cover)

Back in the out-at-elbow days of the depression '30s, a young Hungarian engineer named Peter Goldmark tried unsuccessfully to get a job with Radio Corp. of America. About the same time, an equally obscure Ohio researcher named Frank Stanton was brushed off with a form letter when he wrote to RCA's subsidiary, NBC.

For a total investment of $100 a week RCA could have hired both men and saved itself many a future headache. Today, Frank Stanton is president of Columbia Broadcasting System and Peter Goldmark is CBS's top color-television engineer. Between them, they have led a series of determined assaults on RCA's vast, multimillion-dollar manufacturing, recording and broadcasting empire, are CBS's top men today in a serious threat to RCA's supremacy in television. Objective of their campaign: to sell the U.S. public CBS's brand of color television.

Committed Battalions. During Stanton's presidency, CBS first stole a march on RCA Victor by launching the 33 1/3 r.p.m. long-playing record. At the end of 1948, CBS launched a full-scale talent raid on NBC, and captured such topflight entertainers as Jack Benny, Amos 'n' Andy, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Edgar Bergen, Red Skelton. Last October, CBS won what seemed at the time to be its biggest victory of all: a 5-to-2 decision by the Federal Communications Commission in favor of CBS's color TV over the rival systems of RCA and California's Color Television Inc. Last week CBS began publicly demonstrating its color process to eager thousands in Manhattan, announced plans to have similar daily demonstrations set up in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Chicago and either Cleveland or Detroit.

With the FCC's decision, jubilant CBS hoped that the color war was over and that profits could be reaped. Sponsors were eager to underwrite color programs; more than 50,000 requests for tickets to the first week of demonstrations had poured in. On the executive 20th floor of CBS's Manhattan office building there were happy visions of $50 million or so in royalties as CBS-licensed color sets streamed from the nation's assembly lines.

Then RCA counterattacked. RCA's Board Chairman David Sarnoff, no man to break away from any fight, denounced the FCC decision as "scientifically unsound and against the public interest," ordered battalions of RCA lawyers, publicity men and engineers into the fray. In Chicago, Sarnoff stopped the CBS victory march dead in its tracks by getting a federal court order suspending the FCC decision until three judges can pass on its merits (TIME, Nov. 27). In practice, this means that CBS may telecast in color, but only at its own expense. Until the court decides, no CBS color programs may be sponsored.

Question Box. The fierce struggle between the corporate giants still goes on, but it has traveled from the front pages high into the legal stratosphere of the courts. Most people were less interested in the sounds of business strife than in a few straight answers to a few simple questions. They wanted to know: What is color TV like? And when can they see it in their homes? And is CBS color really "mechanical" and already out of date? And just what is all the shooting about?

One of the answers is easy: CBS color is good--in some ways better than Technicolor. It adds depth and detail to the TV picture. The colors themselves are vivid but not harsh. Some programs--sports, for example--gain immeasurably with the addition of color. But a poor TV show, of course--tasteless comedy, tired drama or stale vaudeville routines--cannot be freshened by all the hues in the spectrum. An entertainment egg can be laid as easily in color as in black & white--perhaps more easily.

For the answers to the other questions, the TV fan has to wrestle with the six-syllable words "compatibility" and "convertibility." Around these words swirled the fiercest arguments of the FCC hearings.

The weak point in the CBS system is its lack of compatibility. This means that the 9,000,000 TV sets now in use in the U.S. cannot receive CBS colorcasts even in black & white. The RCA system is fully compatible. If a station were telecasting RCA color, the ordinary sets now in use would show black & white pictures. RCA's big argument: Why make all U.S. TV sets obsolete by using the CBS system instead of RCA's?

On the witness stand, CBS President Stanton offered to withdraw his system if a really workable compatible system could be developed. The FCC has given RCA good marks for compatibility. The trouble, as FCC sees it, is that RCA's color is not good enough.

On the subject of convertibility, which just means changing over a black & white set so that it can receive colorcasts, CBS is in a better position. In the CBS system, convertibility can be managed, though awkwardly. First, an adapter (estimated price: $30-$50) is added to an ordinary set to make it compatible. Then a clumsy converter (estimated price: $75-$100) is fitted in front of the screen to produce color.

The RCA system stumbles over convertibility. Though it claims to have a workable converter, RCA will not estimate its possible price. The FCC "First Report" states flatly that "no practical [RCA] converter was demonstrated at any of the demonstrations on the record."

Three Sequentials. The FCC hearings, which began more than a year ago, took place in the splendid isolation of the large Department of Commerce auditorium in Washington. The busy lawyers and technical experts often outnumbered the spectators--usually a few leg-weary tourists. The testimony of engineers, executives and experts fills 40 volumes and 11,178 pages covering everything from RCA's patent position (which is well-nigh impregnable) to the precise emphasis Frank Stanton placed on "love" when he said he loved compatibility.

When the evidence was all in, and the FCCommissioners had taken a long look at CBS's "field sequential," RCA's "dot sequential," and CTI's "line sequential" systems (TIME, Nov. 28, 1949), they issued the First Report.

In it, the FCC found that the RCA system was unsatisfactory both as to "color fidelity" and "texture." It described RCA color itself as "soft," reported the system to be "exceedingly complex," and noted that a "time error of 1/11,000,000 of a second results in color contamination." As for the CTI system, it was "unduly complex"; it had a "serious line-crawl problem, its picture texture was not satisfactory," and there was "great doubt" of CTI's compatibility.

The FCC held that CBS's picture (see chart) "is most satisfactory from the point of view of texture, color fidelity and contrast" and that "receivers and station equipment are simple to handle." Its most serious limitations: 1) lack of compatibility, and 2) its present limited picture size (12 1/2 inches).

The drawback of picture size might well have a happy ending, thought the FCC. It is caused by the one "mechanical" feature of the CBS apparatus--the spinning, motor-driven color wheel which must be more than twice the size of the TV screen. The FCC saw a way out through the adoption of a tri-color picture tube which would do away with the wheel, all limitations on picture size, and make CBS as fully electronic as any other system. RCA had demonstrated such a tube late in the hearings, but the FCC reported that it was deficient in registration and color fidelity. CBS, Philco, Du Mont, Paramount and others are working on tri-color receiver tubes of their own design. None of them has yet been proved in field tests.

In the First Report, the FCC had given TV manufacturers a month to indicate that they were willing to start making new sets internally adapted so that they could receive CBS colorcasts in black & white. Most of the manufacturers protested that the time was too short for such a radical changeover. But the FCC wouldn't wait. In October, it handed down a final decision in favor of the CBS system.

The Winner. CBS President Frank Nicholas Stanton, 42, who spearheaded the CBS color fight, stands just under 6 ft. and weighs 175 Ibs. His expression is at once attentive and stolid; his strong jaw is often clamped firmly on a pipestem. A certain lack of facial animation, together with his carefully parted, yellow-blond hair, have led wags to call him "the Veronica Lake of CBS."

Stanton's success story makes Horatio Alger seem believable. Last year he signed a ten-year, million-dollar contract with CBS, and bonuses will raise his annual income to $130,000. Last month he had the heady experience of turning down a job, for which he could "name his own price," offered him by rival RCA. Refusing jobs has become almost a matter of routine. In his 15 years at CBS he has said no (sometimes repeatedly) to Pollsters Elmo Roper and Nielsen, FORTUNE, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and two other universities, three advertising firms, assorted Government agencies and well-heeled foundations.

His early years in Dayton were more often spent seeking jobs than being sought after. Of Yankee and German Swiss stock, the son of a high-school manual training teacher, Stanton started earning money as a newsboy. After school he worked at the Metropolitan men's clothing store where he progressed from stock boy to window trimmer and showcard artist. His former boss, Richard Meyer, recalls that Stanton was wise beyond his years: "We used to get into arguments about religion and sex --on a very serious plane. Most fellows his age didn't worry about those things in that day."

Meat for the Grinder. During his four years at Ohio Wesleyan University, Stanton continued to work at the Metropolitan, commuting 90 miles to Dayton every weekend. He also found time to be elected president of the senior honorary society and of his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta; to be put on probation for his part in the production of a college musical, some of whose lines offended the Methodist sensibilities of Ohio Wesleyan's faculty, and to split a $2,100 profit as editor of the college yearbook, which was illustrated by a boyhood chum who later became well-known Cartoonist Milton (Steve Canyon) Caniff.

At Ohio Wesleyan, Stanton vacillated between a pre-med course and a psychology major. When he graduated in 1930, he was offered an advertising job by Philadelphia's N. W. Ayer on the basis of his work on the college yearbook, but before he could report for work, the depression had changed N. W. Ayer's mind. Stanton hurriedly grabbed a job at Ohio State as graduate assistant (salary: $750 a year), married Ruth Stephenson, the girl he'd been going with since he was 14, and for three years worked as a part-time teacher while writing a Ph.D. thesis on industrial psychology.

One of his research projects was on the subject of advertising appeals, and Stanton concluded that advertising was more effective when heard than when seen. To bring this finding to the attention of radio broadcasters, he thoughtfully sent a copy of his paper to CBS. Paul Kesten, then CBS vice president in charge of advertising and sales promotion, pounced on Stanton's report as "good red meat for my meat grinder," wired him an offer of a research job at $50 a week.

Frank Stanton arrived in New York in 1935 with his wife, a wire-haired fox terrier, a second-hand Ford, a list of modestly priced Manhattan hotels--and an empty wallet. It was the most significant trip he had made outside his native Midwest since his teens, when he had attended a Y.M.C.A. conference in Finland as the official representative of the "Hi-Y" boys of Ohio. Many of his fellow executives think he has retained, to this day, an air of Y.M.C.A. earnestness and unblinking sincerity. One of them describes him as "just a country boy with a Madison Avenue gloss."

The country boy tackled his CBS job in a manner that made Kesten's eyes pop. Working 70 to 80 hours a week, Stanton rapidly became research director, then advertising director and found time to develop, with Vienna's Dr. Paul Lazarsfeld, an electrical gimmick called the Program Analyzer which automatically measured radio listenership.

Two Strikes. By the time World War II began, Stanton was an administrative vice president in charge of research, sales, building construction, pressagentry, maintenance and operations. On the side, he supervised CBS-owned radio stations in Washington, Boston, New York, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, St. Louis and Los Angeles. Without apparent loss of either energy or effectiveness he also commuted several days a week to Washington as a wartime consultant to the Secretary of War and the Office of War Information.

Stanton's speedy rise at CBS was made with two strikes against him: 1) his academic background; 2) his training in research. In the brittle, fast-talking world of radio, college teachers are supposed to be unfit in business and, before Stanton, few research men had wandered from their charts and graphs to become policymakers. Pollster Elmo Roper thinks the explanation lies in Stanton's passion to make facts do something: "Frank knew that research was a doomed duck unless it was used to produce action."

CBS has long been noted for tireless activity and long hours, but the indefatigable Stanton produced so much action that, by contrast, the rest of the throbbing beehive seemed to be standing still. When President William Paley returned from the war, he was stunned to hear other vice presidents nominate Stanton to seniority at their own expense. Stanton became General Manager of CBS. In 1946, when Paley withdrew to the chairmanship of the board, Stanton stepped into the presidency.

Living with It. His biggest job as president has been the long color fight with RCA. Stanton's fight started with FCC hearings in 1946 when CBS petitioned for color TV in the ultra high frequencies. Stanton says of that time: "I was as naive as I was at college. I thought the FCC just had to see our color and it was all over." But the FCC rejected CBS's petition. Two years later, when the FCC ordered its freeze on the construction of new black & white stations, CBS was still scrambling to build its black & white TV network. As a result, there are still no CBS-owned stations in the big markets of the Midwest. In TV coverage, NBC is out in front.

Stanton was extremely effective in the 1949 hearings. Young (37), bush-haired Dick Salant, the lawyer who carried the legal ball for CBS during most of the hearings, particularly admires Stanton's composure under crossexamination. "Sarnoff made a terrific witness--he's an actor who knows exactly how to handle his audience," says Salant. "Stanton was entirely different. You don't have to prepare him. He never loses a fact once he's had it."

By living so constantly with color TV and CBS, Stanton has little time left over for living with himself. Occasionally, he gets away for weekend motor trips with his wife. He likes to drive at high speeds and to photograph the countryside (with a Zeiss Super Ikonta B). To avoid the traffic delays into and out of Manhattan, Stanton leaves one of his cars* in a city easily accessible by airlines, flies to and from it.

The childless Stantons live in a five-room Manhattan apartment that glitters with glass, polished woods and geometric abstractions. It looks a little like a wing of the Museum of Modern Art, but somehow seems to be comfortable, too. Stanton himself decorated the apartment, as well as his own and several other CBS offices'. He is probably one of the few men in the U.S. in his income group who has neither a country place nor any servants. Ruth Stanton does all the cooking and cleaning in the apartment. Says she: "It makes for flexibility and it's good exercise."

Like her husband, attractive, dark-haired Ruth Stanton, 42, dislikes a busy social life. When they must entertain for business reasons, they do it outside their apartment. Calmly accepting her husband's round-the-clock work habits, Ruth Stanton says: "He'd work just as hard running a chicken farm."

But hard work, every now and then, results in insomnia. Says Arthur Godfrey, who is an enthusiastic Stanton admirer: "We each have a phone beside our beds. When he can't sleep, or I can't, one calls the other. We ring once and hang up--that's the signal. If the other's awake, he calls back and says, 'What the hell are you doing up?' "

Stanton has only a cursory interest in sports. One of his top CBS stars recalls that Stanton was once trapped into a softball game. "We found out that he couldn't throw from short to first, and he struck out three times." But in his CBS office, "Stanton is playing his own game, and he's a real homerun-hitting executive."

Tyrannous Child. The entire color uproar was brewed inside the head of slim, pensive Dr. Peter Carl Goldmark, 44, who plays bad chess and good cello, is described by a friend as "part child and part tyrant." Goldmark was discovered by the far-ranging Paul Kesten who,-in 1936, thought CBS should know something about the new medium of television. Peter Goldmark, educated as a physicist in Vienna and Berlin, had already done some TV work in Britain and seemed just the man. Since CBS hired him, the network has invested more than $3,000,000 in his projects.

To CBS executives, more interested in what makes radio and TV sell than in how they operate, Goldmark has the quality of a man from Mars. Nobody at CBS except Adrian Murphy, whose intramural title is "Vice-President in charge of Peter," is ever quite sure what Peter is up to. Goldmark is left alone because they all know he's "some kind of a genius." For Board Chairman Paley, it's enough that "you always know what Peter tells you is gospel."

Iffy Answers. When CBS and Goldmark's system won the color decision, a loud, angry cry went up from the TV manufacturers and dealers who saw a threat to the millions invested in black & white sets. Emerson and Pilot hurried to join RCA in the Chicago court test; Dr. Allen B. Du Mont went on TV over his own network to demonstrate a CBS color wheel (for a 30-inch screen not yet on the market) and ridiculed the CBS system as giving "a Model-T type color picture." In full-page newspaper ads, Hallicrafters charged that "this ill-advised action of the FCC is a threat to the American way of life." A CBS suggestion that TV customers might wait six months before buying new sets had forced it out of business, declared Sightmaster Corp., which sued CBS for $750,000 damages. Admiral's vocal President Ross Siragusa says: "I just think CBS is barking up the wrong tree in this one. I've got high hopes for RCA. But they have got to get going and make their system work. Then we'll buy that one."

Meanwhile, the U.S. public doesn't know what to buy. Asked when he thought color TV would be seen generally throughout the U.S., CBS's Frank Stanton could give only an iffy answer. If the courts do not rule against CBS; if congressional probes do not hold up the FCC decision; if U.S. rearmament does not absorb the electronics industry; if there are no serious shortages of essential materials-- waving away all these ifs, Stanton believes that color will be transmitted from all U.S TV stations by the end of 1952. That means that even if things move as fast as possible, the buyer of a new black & white TV set today will get at least two, probably more, years of use from his set.

Stanton and CBS can still take credit for changing color TV from a laboratory experiment to an immediate possibility. CBS might eventually lose out in the changing fortunes of battle, but color of some sort is certainly on its way. In Hollywood, the major moviemakers, trembling at the thought of being caught with their vaults full of black & white film when color TV comes along to keep moviegoers at home, last week announced that 75% of next year's movies will be shot in Technicolor or Super-Cinecolor. The Theater Owners of America, who presumably know what their customers want, recently passed a resolution demanding that all new films be made in color.

Even the TV manufacturers seemed to be looking more approvingly at CBS. To the handful of small firms (Tele-tone, Celomat, Muntz, Belmont, etc.) that had originally announced they would make CBS color equipment were added such sizable names as Westinghouse, Bendix and Sears, Roebuck. The industry heard rumors that many another company would soon start making CBS color sets. Even Admiral's Siragusa is making a small concession: if the CBS system wins in the courts, each Admiral set will be equipped with a "jack" into which CBS adapter-converters can be plugged. Meanwhile, Frank Stanton and CBS, convinced they have something the public wants, intend to continue unsponsored "experimental" public demonstrations.

* Currently, he has three: a second-hand 1948 Lincoln Continental; a Chevrolet convertible and a new Muntz Jet, which has an aluminum body, a Cadillac engine and a top speed of 140 m.p.h.

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