Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

KINESCOPE RECORDING 131
movies, or San Francisco. Everything not locally produced has to
come in on film. Similarly, in New York, one of the first cities in
the United States to have regular television programs, it is impossible
to present programs from Hollywood by any other means
than film recordings. Since the New York audience is pampered
by seeing live shows only, either by cable or from local studios and
remotes, they do not take too kindly to low-quality recordings
from other regions; the difference is too obvious.
The other networks, NBC, CBS, and Dumont, make use of
various methods of kinescoping, but in all cases the principle is
the same with individual variations. Some of these operations use
double system, however, in preference to the single. Some use a
ten-inch screen for recording with a whiter picture color.
The Paramount intermediate film system has already been
mentioned, but it may not be realized just how specialized a
kinescope system it really is. It is possible to record, develop, and
project a picture within sixty seconds, and the latest equipment,
designed primarily for theatre work, can do it in fifteen seconds.
This system uses 35 mm film exclusively. For the slower, sixty-
second operation ordinary nitrate film is used, but for the high-
speed, high-drying temperature system acetate base has to be used
to overcome the fire hazard.
In this apparatus a magazine of 12,000 feet capacity provides
sufficient film for a two-hour program. Film from the magazine
runs through special lightproof guides to the camera and from
there to a series of developing, fixing, and washing baths. After
this it is dried and either wound onto a reel or conveyed below
to the projection booth and into a projector if it is to be used for
large screen projection. An Akely camera is used in this system.
It would seem that until the quality of the recorded image
improves, kinescoping has much more appeal
to the isolated sta-
tion than to the station which is on the coaxial line or micro-wave
relay link. General reports at hand state that this is indeed the
case, and while the multi-station markets are not making much
use of them, single-station, off-coaxial-cable towns find kinescoping
not only a God-send but also very popular for they enable