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Major Weakness. Sarnoff's lack of interest in some of the commercial aspects of radio may account for the fact that RCA's brilliant record in research and financing has not been equaled by its sales record—until recently. The man who has done much to eliminate this weakness is Frank M. Folsom, onetime vice president of Chicago's Goldblatt Bros, and Montgomery Ward, and chief of the procurement branch of the Navy during World War II, who joined RCA Victor in 1944.
As RCA chairman, Sarnoff lets President Folsom handle most executive details. Folsom is thus the empire's only heir apparent, but at 57, he is close to Sarnoff's own age. There are a few able younger men coming up, but RCA's major weakness is lack of a solid second echelon of younger executives. Its size often makes it hard for RCA to turn fast enough to cope with the crack team of Paley and Frank Stanton at smaller CBS.
Slow but Sure. CBS got the jump on RCA, not only in color, but in putting on the market three years ago the slow-playing record that revolutionized the phonograph business. Not long after that, CBS raided NBC's radio shows, snatched away such top stars as Jack Benny, Amos & Andy. At the time NBC lost the stars, it looked as if it would be hard hit. But Sarnoff has a way of coming out ahead, despite defeats. After the rumpus over the long-playing records died down, business for all record companies, including RCA, picked up. Thanks to the astounding spread of television, the network has hardly missed its radio stars.
To Sarnoff, these were all skirmishes, nothing to scare him from his plans to expand RCA into new territory. He is already itching to put RCA into the electric-appliance business, NBC into the movie business (to make films for television), and is planning a "pay-as-you-hear" TV system which would not depend on telephones as does Zenith Radio Corp.'s system (TIME, June 4). Above all, he is confident that the vast sums he has poured into research will continue to pay off with more spectacular advances than even his color television tube.
"Electrons," he points out, "can supply the brains for the control of machinery, respond to light, color, a wisp of smoke—the faintest touch or the feeblest sound. Today, these electrons can follow a chart, a blueprint or a pattern more accurately than the human eye. Some day, they may even respond to smell and taste. Who would dare predict the future? He is a rash man who would limit an art as limitless as space itself."
* In RCA's system, the color-television camera breaks a picture down into three colors (red, green and blue). These color impulses are broadcast, picked up by a television receiver circuit, which sets .off three electronic "guns" (one for each color) inside the picture tube. They project the picture on the face of the tube so fast (1,800 times a minute) that the three color pictures blend into a single all-color one. * Reginald Fessenden had made such a broadcast in 1906, when wireless operators at sea were startled to pick up the unearthly sounds.