Busy Week

On the technical side, TV had an interesting week, with new developments popping to light all over the map. Items:

sbA process that throws some color onto the screens of black-and-white TV sets was tried out in Atlanta, Toledo and Detroit, with further tests planned for Cincinnati and Milwaukee this week. Called Telcon, the gimmick was developed in Austria and licensed to a Toledo company. It works on the same mysterious principle that causes the eye to see color if a black-and-white top is spun. It is not an attempt to compete with regular color TV, since it produces only a few colored lines that have no relationship to the color of the images on the screen, but the process seems to have some potential as an advertising device to attract the eye. When it was tried out on daytime TV. Georgia housewives excitedly called their husbands. Georgia husbands said their wives were crackers.

sbThe aircraft carrier Enterprise, operating with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, has had for about a year its own self-contained TV station, broadcasting training films, ship's basketball games. Wagon Tram, Perry Mason, and bosomy French lessons by Actress Dawn Addams onto 85 TV screens on the carrier's closed circuit. The sailors paid for it themselves through bingo, raffles, and so on. Pitying the little destroyer escorts and other pint-sized ships that always knifed around the "Big E" carrying nothing but radios, the Enterprise crew raised more money and installed a transmitter. Last week WENT-TV began broadcasting to the fleet. Dawn Addams was there for the ceremonies, but the inaugural show was an episode from Victory at Sea.

sbBroadway shows and sport events may soon be playing on screens in theaters all over the country--and in color. National General Corp., which owns a chain of West Coast theaters, announced last week that it is equipping 150 of its own theaters and 200 others with General Electric's new "light valve" projector. If Broadway producers and sport promoters sign up as eagerly as National General hopes they will, nationwide theater pay-TV may be a reality within a year.

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