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The most enraptured fans are children : the limpest puppet show or the most ancient Western will bring in neighborhoods of bug-eyed, awestruck kids. "The hours between play and bed used to be the most hectic part of the day," says one Manhattan mother. "Now I know where the kids are. The television set is the best nurse in the world."
Performers are eyeing the new monster warily. Radio's Mary Margaret McBride last week decided to take off 20 lbs. to make herself more telegenic. And politicians have reason to fear it. Says NBC's Vice President John F. Royal hopefully: "Television will strip the phony, the mountebank, the demigod, as bare as the day he was born." Adds RCA Chairman David Sarnoff: "Political candidates may have to adopt new techniques ... Their dress, their smiles and gestures . . . may determine, to an appreciable extent, their popularity."
Broadcasting Magazine recently polled a group of television experts on the presidential candidates. The score: Truman, Vandenberg and Wallace all rated high; Dewey was hampered by his mustache, Stassen by his youth, MacArthur by his baldness, but all three managed to pass; Taft was the "shakiest" of all, both in appearance and delivery.
In Godfathers' Image. Like the atom, television has in it tremendous possibilities of both good and evil. Educators are looking to the telescreen to solve the teaching shortage and improve the quality, if not the warmth, of the teaching process. They rhapsodize over the thought of an Einstein or a Toynbee lecturing to hundreds of classrooms at once. Johns Hopkins University has televised several operations, is equipping its two newest surgery rooms with telecameras, to bring thousands of medical students closer to the operating table.
But the best way to measure television's future is to look at the men who control it. And since radio and Hollywood are television's godfathers, the child will probably grow up in their image, with their considerable virtues—and their considerable vices.
* NBC charges a minimum $1,000 an hour to television advertisers. It will probably hike its rates again in October. * Color requires costlier equipment, both in the studio and the home. It also needs a wider channel than black & white, therefore a higher frequency. †The second Louis-Walcott bout, June 23, is being touted as a television event to set beside the 1921 Dempsey-Carpentier fight, which gave radio its first big push. * RCA's table model costs $325; its most expensive set, $1,195-Cheapest model: Tele-tone Corp.'s at $149.95. Costliest: Du Mont's, at $2,495.