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The public scored David Sarnoff's Radio Corp. of America with a lost round last year in the great color TV fight with Columbia Broadcasting System. Sarnoff did not stay down. Last week he showed the television industry a new tube that receives clear, true color, and he showed the public that RCA's color system can do what CBS's can not: color programs broadcast by RCA can be received in black & white on present sets without any change. It looked as if radio's miracle man had not run out of miracles.
For months, Wall Street speculators have been betting on Sarnoff. So far this year, RCA stock has risen from 16⅜ to 21½, CBS fallen from 33 to 25½. This trend is the more remarkable because six months ago RCA was apparently caught flat-footed when the Federal Communications Commission decided to license the CBS "whirling disc" system for commercial broadcasting. RCA promised a much better system, one that existing TV sets would receive in black & wnite (unlike the CBS method) without any change in the sets. But the color RCA showed FCC last fall was mushy and CBS's was clear. FCC decided not to wait.
Even then, old radiomen kept their eyes on Sarnoff. He is the man who put radio in the home—and never forgets it for a waking moment. He is boss of RCA with its 52,000 employees (including those of the 238-station NBC radio and television network), of 13 manufacturing plants which turn out millions of radios, TV sets and hundreds of different electronic gadgets, of a research staff which year in & year out develops new wonders. Would Sarnoff, who boasts that he was born about the same time that the electron was discovered (as if they were somehow twins), allow himself to be bested in the next great advance of the, industry that he had led for two decades? Those who knew Sarnoff's vast ability—and his vast pride —thought not. They listened when, coldly eying the FCC decision, he said; "We may have lost the battle, but we'll win the war."
Secret Weapon. To get the weapon he needed, Sarnoff prodded RCA, not a nimble organization, into an amazing burst of speed to improve its color system. Last week, in his Radio City Exhibition Hall, Sarnoff put on a demonstration for some 200 radio and television reporters, who saw a 20-minute program starring Nanette Fabray and Singer Yma Sumac on RCA's new color tubes.* There was no blurring or running of colors, even in the fastest movement, e.g., a pair of performing lovebirds flapping their wings. As a show topper, an RCA mobile unit focused on a swimming pool near New York where a troupe of swimmers and divers performed. The outdoor telecast, which RCA explained could just as well be a football game or boxing match, came through almost as clearly as the studio show.