BIG, MEDIUM, SMALL START

I am slightly vague as to what species of audio was promoted for the first regular on-the-air television broadcasts in this country at the time of WWII--was it already FM? But I still retain my astonishment from that day at the voracious appetite for sheer bandwidth that this new broadcast monster displayed, in those early years when the rank and file of us first got to set eyes on a real TV picture with sound. Definitely there came the grand reorganization that ended old-band FM radio, as recounted here earlier.

And in that big shake-up was created the present or "new" FM band, in the higher megs. It was plonked down right in the middle of the TV spectrum, with the numbered TV channels on both sides, which seemed very odd to most of us. If you tuned your new-band FM off the ends of the assigned frequency range, you could pick up TV audio. You still can.

What explained it was a matter of relative proportion. For that new FM, with its boasted "100-channel" profusion (I'm merely quoting the public arguments of the day), one single TV channel was pre-empted out of the baker's dozen set up. Within the con fines of that single TV channel the en tire FM radio spectrum was placed, complete as we know it today. Voracious is the word for TV.

If our modest little FM audio could now take over just the older, lower TV channels, excluding all of the higher UHF area, we could provide many more than 1,000 full-width audio channels for FM radio, each one of them capable of everything in the way of hi-fi stereo that is now heard on the FM radio spectrum. Call it 100 to 1.

This, you can see, is one of those "all natural" physical setups which, like the laws that govern automobile speed and stopping distance, underlie vast areas of our daily activities. Of course, the professional broadcast engineer knows all about it, and the audio engineer too, if he has done his proper homework. But the public? Who knows. The exact figures are not important outside the lab; the general principle, though, explains a lot that we should know about broadcasting, and also, of course, about all the later for mats for audio and video that involve recording and playback. Parameters differ. The basic relationship does not.

Video continues to demand enormous bands of available space as compared to audio by itself, minus picture, wherever we may turn, whatever the medium. Along with all the other factors put together, that single element in our "picture" has an enormous importance in determining the very shape of audio.

I have mentioned that after 1946, that turning-point year, the .newly launched television operation began to take over for everything in consumer electronics, all the way from the 78 phonograph record to the movies. And somewhere, lost in the big shuffle, both AM and FM radio struggled to find even the simplest means for continued existence. It was a bizarre time indeed, though all the media eventually did survive. I think what needs to be said, then, is a bit about that early TV, back at its very beginning on our air-and here I can return to my own memories.

As you may easily guess, a lot of promoters or would-be promoters in the last pre-WWII years were aware that television was on the way and would likely become a big thing once the technical difficulties were solved for mass production. Exactly as in FM, the probability of war was not considered. Nobody wanted to admit the chance of an event as unsettling as that, and so business went right ahead (along with increasing "defense" preparations) straight from the fatal day for Poland in the autumn of 1939 until the war caught up with us on December 7, 1941. Two years of frantic development, in every non-military field you can imagine.

But TV really wasn't that far along. It was only black and white, of course "only" being an anachronistic term, since we thought B & W was just fine.

More important, TV began life in huge floor consoles that enclosed tiny little picture tubes almost ridiculously small.

War or no war, TV wasn't yet ready to go boom on the economic scene. The war not only gave FM a lot of time to experiment but continued the existing--and huge--AM radio system for another five years, roughly speaking, before there was a major shift and TV came blasting in.

The pre-war promoters were right about TV's possibilities. But they seemed, abysmally, to have ignored one major factor, exactly as FM and Major Armstrong did. FM stations sprang up; applications for outlets piled sky-high in those late years of war denial. All these promotions as factors put together, that single element in our "picture" has an enormous importance in determining the very shape of audio.

I have mentioned that after 1946, that turning-point year, the .newly launched television operation began to take over for everything in consumer electronics, all the way from the 78 phonograph record to the movies. And somewhere, lost in the big shuffle, both AM and FM radio struggled to find even the simplest means for continued existence. It was a bizarre time indeed, though all the media eventually did survive. I think what needs to be said, then, is a bit about that early TV, back at its very beginning on our air--and here I can return to my own memories.

As you may easily guess, a lot of promoters or would-be promoters in the last pre-WWII years were aware that television was on the way and would likely become a big thing once the technical difficulties were solved for mass production. Exactly as in FM, the probability of war was not considered. Nobody wanted to admit the chance of an event as unsettling as that, and so business went right ahead (along with increasing "defense" preparations) straight from the fatal day for Poland in the autumn of 1939 until the war caught up with us on December 7, 1941. Two years of frantic development, in every non-military field you can imagine.

But TV really wasn't that far along. It was only black and white, of course "only" being an anachronistic term, since we thought B & W was just fine.

More important, TV began life in huge floor consoles that enclosed tiny little picture tubes almost ridiculously small.

War or no war, TV wasn't yet ready to go boom on the economic scene. The war not only gave FM a lot of time to experiment but continued the existing--and huge--AM radio system for another five years, roughly speaking, before there was a major shift and TV came blasting in.

The pre-war promoters were right about TV's possibilities. But they seemed, abysmally, to have ignored one major factor, exactly as FM and Major Armstrong did. FM stations sprang up; applications for outlets piled sky-high in those late years of war denial. All these promotions assumed that the new media--FM or TV--would be theirs for the asking, once the moment arrived. What they all failed to see was that the existing net works and their close associates, like Ma Bell with its telephone cables, would grab television whole, to replace AM radio on a nationwide basis. There would be no room for the small opera tor, in either FM or TV.

And so, as I've mentioned before, the little FM station at which I worked was officially a would-be television out fit. I'll call it Metro Television, just to protect myself from long-departed ghosts. For our owners, FM was merely a way (to say it once again) to hold a place on the air, to keep a foot in the broadcast door. What else? There was indeed television during the war. But it didn't come from us. We purveyed the finest existing audio-and that was it.

Now, we did indeed have to do something to make ourselves look vaguely like a television station. After all, there was our public image to consider. So one day, shortly after I hove on the scene with my first radio pro grams, a monster console appeared in our downstairs reception room. It was a television set! ("TV" had not yet become a common term, nor the British "telly.") It was RCA's very best, with the aforementioned tiny tube, I think maybe 6 inches diagonal, protruding through the startlingly large front area of the furniture housing. Did they really need all that console space? With tubes, probably yes. Television demands, or did demand, space in more than one way.

None of us had ever set eyes on actual TV before, some 20-odd souls including the station engineers and announcers. So you can imagine the impact of that thing, sitting right there where everyone had to pass it to go anywhere at all. It was, as they say, the cynosure of every eye. Including mine.

You will, of course, understand that even in the busiest of offices or studios there is a vast amount of play, so to speak. Times of waiting, of indecision, of coffee breaks and restroom visitation plus plenty of just plain goofing off.

That television was very well patronized--and not by the outsiders who were supposed to be impressed. It ran all day and evening for us, so long as there was a broadcast signal.

At first, I glanced only casually, sat down and looked a while, then went about my business. But as we know, television is insidious, even a 6-inch diagonal. To lose your attention, it has to get down almost to postage-stamp size. My attention began not to be lost.

I'm always aware of and interested in the way media are used for effective, i.e. dramatic, presentation. I became fascinated with TV, but not, as you will be thinking, because of its astonishing power. It was exactly the opposite-its uncanny ineptitude at that stage of its existence. You wouldn't believe it.

Have you any idea how far television, with all its enormous faults and its pall of vacuity, has actually come from its beginnings as a communications medium? Beyond belief.

The few stations then on the air were, of course, network. The big radio powers had set up pilot plants, so to speak-not merely in FM radio, as was necessary for the smaller aspirants, but in actual TV. The networks could do it-we couldn't. These pilot stations were, exactly as we were in FM, non commercial, on a very small scale, operated by hook and by crook on tiny sustaining budgets. But they were there, on the air, and they could populate the few existing publicly sold receivers with actual pictures.

What you saw, then, aside from early news-casting (just a man reading a script against a blank background) was what amounted to a small apartment, rebuilt into a makeshift studio.

There was a main "stage" or room, and various doors, always the same, giving access to some very restricted areas behind stage. I sensed that there must be at least 3 feet of cramped closet space back there, where the participants-the actors and performers and whatnot-had to conceal themselves, and from which they made their en trances and exits.

Scenery? The most rudimentary, on the order of a very amateur improvised theatrical show. A drape here, a chair and table, a couch, maybe one picture on a wall just to look homey. No outdoor scenes. We didn't have TV out doors, short of some enormous van full of equipment-and it was not a time to set up that sort of thing.

Sound? I wish I could say more. It was, all things considered, quite adequate in a mono sort of way. Yes, the people talked. That was the essence of TV. And it was live, as the movies were not. Straight from the station in real time, never recorded. (That came later.) If a man spoke to you, he was right there at the very moment, perhaps a few blocks away down the street. That gave a new immediacy that reached its greatest impact when the big sports broadcasts came in, years later.

So just picture the scene as I watched that little screen in the late '40s, in the lobby of Metro Television, the FM station. The set is tuned to CBS and on comes a drama-a radio play, only now it has pictures. There is that blank wall again, maybe with a different picture, the same old chair and couch and table-and those doors.

Out of door left comes actress A. She spouts her lines to actress B, emerging from the right door. After a bit, the plot calls for somebody else and out he comes from the same old place, that all-but-visible closet behind. Actress A is finished--she retires back into her door on the left, and the play goes on. I am hypnotized. Because, minute after minute, time passes and there she is, actress A, scrunched up inside that stifling closet behind the left door! Will she ever get out? She has to be there.

When the poor soul finally emerges, I give a sigh of relief-I thought she might suffocate.

That, repeated a thousand times, was TV drama in the '40s. In a few days you got to know every cranny of those foursquare studios, all too obvious and immovable, always the same.

It was awful. There was no television technique; they just didn't know what to do with the medium.

Then one day, to my astonishment, a live show came on featuring two musicians at two keyboards-and suddenly, marvelous angle shots of hands, fingers, heads, a pure fantasy to real, live music. I was entranced. I immediately wrote an enthusiastic letter to CBS TV, all 15 feet or so of it in that studio. Do you know, a few days later I got a perfervid reply from the station crew, almost weeping with thanks. It was the rare viewer like myself who kept the CBS TV people faithful to their art through such perilous times! I wish I had that letter now. It bore, I thought, the marks of tears.

(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY ; adapted from Audio magazine, Mar. 1987)

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