Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

334
THE PROGRAM ANGLE
Paramount has its own film recording studios in New York,
Chicago, and Los Angeles. In addition to this it has provision for
big screen theatre television so that within sixty seconds of a picture
being received it is flashed on the screen as a movie film. The
same equipment that produces the film for the theatre screen is
used to make kinescope recordings, with the difference that the
film, instead of running into the projection booth, is spooled in a
and retained.
magazine
In New York, Paramount has a studio in the Paramount
building which can be rented by anyone who wishes to make a
recording of a program on film. It is a complete television studio
with three cameras and all the usual control room features. In
addition, the program from any of the seven New York metropolitan
market stations can be recorded by connection into the tele-
phone company's lines.
This is the situation which might eventually come about in
many big cities where there are television stations which are not
owned and operated by networks or big companies and so cannot
afford to buy individual kinescoping equipment. The television
station desiring television kinescoping service would merely call
up the center and request it. The recording company does the rest
and within fifteen minutes after the end of the program the
finished print is delivered to the station. This sort of thing is done
in hundreds of small towns today in sound-radio broadcasting.
Small stations have a line to a central recording studio and if a
transcription is required the program is "piped" to the studio. A
charge is made for this, of course, but it is quite often cheaper for
the small operator to do this than buy equipment which is rarely
used.
When costs are considered both opinions and figures vary con-
cerning the over-all cost to the station. The subject
plicated by the fact that so many
is further com-
variables enter into it in the
form of union charges and terms that it is inadvisable to quote
them here; consequently, only generalizations will be made.
Briefly, the problems to be faced come under three headings: performers'
rights, musical problems, and literary rights. Actors have