In There Swinging

When FCC made its color TV decision in favor of CBS (TIME, Oct. 23), RCA's scrappy Board Chairman David Sarnoff apparently did not hear the bell ending the fight. Last month he won a temporary injunction restraining the FCC decision. Last week, still in there swinging, he personally ran a demonstration of RCA's improved color TV system in Washington. More than 100 newsmen and businessmen saw color pictures that were brighter, more stable and had much better definition than any RCA color previously shown.

Observers who had seen both systems felt that RCA's color was still not quite so good as that of CBS. The New York Times's Jack Gould thought RCA's primary colors (red, blue and green) "appeared less harsh to the eye than was the case with the CBS system," but he found "a tendency toward green in some images" and "the RCA tints seemed somewhat less warm" than those of CBS. The Wall Street Journal's Joseph Guilfoyle complained that "the reds were off-color" in some pictures. Joseph Kaselow, in the New York Herald Tribune, agreed that the improved RCA color was "basically good," even though marred by "fuzziness" and "unnatural flesh tones."

None of the FCCommissioners was invited to the demonstration, explained Board Chairman David Sarnoff, because RCA is currently engaged in litigation with FCC. Though well satisfied with the success of the demonstration, RCA was not yet ready to estimate the costs of its new tricolor tube receivers. Said Executive Vice President C. B. Jolliffe: "We do not pretend that RCA color is perfect . . . The great virtue of this all-electronic system is that it offers opportunity for continuing improvements. It does not have the limitations inherent in incompatible [i.e., CBS] systems."

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