Mac on TV

Boasted one TV executive: "We'll follow MacArthur from the time he arrives until he's down to his shorts in his hotel room." The television industry almost lived up to the threat. From the moment the Batoan touched U.S. soil at Hawaii's Hickam Field to the triumphal procession through Manhattan's ticker-tape blizzard five days later, TV kept its relentless eyes on General Douglas MacArthur.

In getting their pictures, TVmen were knocked about by MPs in Hawaii, trampled by crowds in San Francisco, manhandled by police in Washington. TV film was flown across the Pacific from Hawaii to the U.S., hurtled in a souped-up Mustang fighter from California to Omaha, the western terminus of the coaxial cable. After MacArthur reached Washington, film was flown back to the West Coast.

The Show in Washington. TV engineers, who had learned their lessons during Harry Truman's inauguration in 1949 when they tried to cover too much ground with their cameras, this time had only five pick-up spots. All shots were fed to a master control room at the Wardman Park Hotel, carried by coaxial cable to New York, where they were siphoned off to the networks and then fed back to Washington TV sets. This meant that images Washingtonians saw on their screens had to travel from Washington to New York and back (estimated time for the trip: one-454th of a second).

In the Capitol, three cameras focused on the hushed House chamber and on MacArthur's deeply serious face as he spoke. One camera, equipped with a "zoo-mar" lens flown down from New York, shot dramatic close-ups of the procession down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Show in New York. TV's Mac-Arthur coverage in New York went as smoothly as in Washington. Manhattan's WPIX stood by with spares ready to rush to the scene in case any of the pooled TV equipment broke down; none did. Teetering truckloads of newsreel cameramen were able to keep pace with the parade all along its route. TV's mobile units were tied to three strategic locations (Liberty Street & Broadway, Bowling Green, City Hall) by the umbilical cords of power lines plugged into convenient buildings. The MacArthur coverage showed that TVmen were learning to be more relaxed about their business. In the case of "stage waits," for instance, instead of filling them with pointless interviews, they let the camera look at street scenes, study the faces in the waiting crowds.

In contrast to the Kefauver hearings, when TIME was the only sponsor, eight advertisers (LIFE, Longines-Wittnauer, Motorola, United Fruit, American Oil Co., Collier's, Newsweek, United Air Lines) took over segments of the MacArthur processional on TV. They got their money's worth: the MacArthur show was TV's biggest & best job to date.

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