Pay-&-See TV

The U.S. has been talking about pay-as-you-see TV for years, but the talk brought more wind than action. The one real experiment at Bartlesville, Okla., in 1957 was a flop, and since then everyone has been too worried about a fight with the TV networks to try again. Last week Paramount Pictures Corp., which has spent more than $8,000,000 to perfect the system since 1951, took its enterprising idea to a more hospitable climate: Canada. Last week in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke,* 1,000 TV-owning families could sit back and see a first-run movie or sports event uninterrupted by commercials. All they had to do was slip $1 in nickels, dimes or quarters into a box and push the button. Among the first shows: The Nun's Story, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The FBI Story.

Sponsor of the new Canadian pay-TV is Trans-Canada Telemeter, Ltd., a hustling subsidiary of Famous Players Canadian Corp., the country's biggest theater chain. Famous Players bought the Telemeter franchise from Paramount, decided on Etobicoke as the best test market it could find: 96% of the 40,000 families already own TV sets, get excellent reception from five Canadian and nearby U.S. stations. Says Eugene Fitzgibbons, 38, boss of Famous Players' Telemeter subsidiary: "We wanted to compete under the toughest conditions."

Telemeter set up its own broadcasting station on Toronto's Bloor Street, installed color and video tape transmitting equipment able to serve 100,000 receivers, leased 100 miles of coaxial cable to carry the transmissions. Overall cost: $1,500,000. Unlike the Bartlesville system, which cost a flat $9.50 per month for two channels, the company charged an initial $5 for installing a three-channel Telemeter box that fits any receiver, does not affect other reception. Consumers pay only for what they watch, can store up to $2.50 in the Telemeter box.

At week's end the small change was jingling into the till so fast, Telemeter-man Fitzgibbons figures that, with 3,000 installations already guaranteed, he needs only another 4,000 sets in Etobicoke to break even, hopes eventually to snare most of Toronto's 356,000 TV receivers for Telemeter. If Telemeter scores a Canadian success, Paramount may then take another crack at the U.S. market and its estimated 50 million TV sets.

* Pronounced Ee-to-be-coe.

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