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The Little Now. Despite all the bustle and the big talk, anyone who bought a television set last week would have to be a sport fan, a connoisseur of antique films, or a man with a lot of patience. Most stations telecast only four hours a day. With some exceptions, their programs are at the level of movies in the heyday of the Keystone Cops, or of radio in the era when fans stayed up all night to hear Pittsburgh.
The television stations do not deny this, but do offer a few excuses. Program directors have operated on the skimpiest of budgets (until recently as much as 80% of television's money and personnel was spent on the engineering end), and against exasperating odds: inadequate studio equipment, a Petrillo ban on live musicians (which ended only nine weeks ago), and Hollywood's cold shoulder. Under the circumstances, it is perhaps remarkable that TV has offered anything at all worth looking at.
Sport takes up a quarter of television's program time, not only because it is good but because most everything else is bad. It is probably the chief reason why television caught on first in the bars & grills. (Quipped Fred Allen: "There are millions of people in New York who don't even know what television is. They are not old enough to go into saloons yet.")
Boxing, wrestling, tennis and other sports that are fought out in a small area or follow a prescribed course are apt to be as good on the screen as on the spot. Baseball, football, hockey, horse racing and basketball are tougher problems. Too frequently, watchers are dragged through eye-straining "pans" as the camera races to catch up with the action. Baseball telecasts, says the show business magazine Variety, "are right back where radio was when a batter would rattle a hit off the fence for two bases and Ted Husing would call it a 'Texas Leaguer.' "
But they are improving. CBS in particular has hired commentators and camera directors with some knowledge of the game. A television announcer has to be more of an expert than his opposite number on radio: there is no point in describing what the audience can see for itself; the announcer has to interpret for the ignorant without annoying the informed.
At first the camera kept its eye close up, on pitcher & batter, and followed the runner to first. It has since learned that one of television's big thrills is watching Outfielder Joe DiMaggio take a practiced look at a ball heading his way, turn, and without looking back spurt to the right spot, swing around casually and let the ball fall into his glove. The unexpected makes some of television's brightest moments: a rainstorm breaks, and the camera shows ground keepers covering the pitcher's box with canvas, then sweeps across the bleachers, singling out soaked fans huddling under newspapers. The key man is the camera director, who must watch on small screens the action of three or four cameras, to decide which image to send over the air at any moment.