Imagine a TV network with Bugs Bunny, “Casablanca” and “42nd Street” decades before “The WB.”
It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. In a manner of speaking, Warner Bros. got into the television business—in 1930.
Below you see a list of television stations in the U.S. published that year1. Several of them can be found in TV listings of newspapers though some had little entertainment value. For example, if you tuned in W2XBS, about all you might see is Felix the Cat or some other statuette revolving in front of a camera for several hours. No music in the background. Then it would happen again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.
One station which never appeared in printed schedules was W2XBO, with headquarters on Long Island City and owned by the United Research Corporation.
Who was United Research? Part of the answer comes in a Billboard story published February 22, 1930.
NEW YORK, Feb. 17.—With the Radio Corporation of America, General Electric and Jenkins experimenting with television comes the news that the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company has been and is now doing vast experimental work along similar lines.
Television is evidently the next move in talking pictures. How soon they will be established is a matter of time. However, the big corporations evidently believe that they are thoroly practical and the various organizations are working in a most secretive manner towards the end of perfection.
The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company has made application to the Federal Radio Commission for a license to operate an experimental television station on Long Island.
Dr. Arthur W. Carpenter, of the United Research Corporation, subsidiary of Brunswick, appeared before the commission in Washington and stated that the Hart silenium [sic] cell used by it is superior to any cell heretofore made. The commission was also told that up to the present time it has been used in the development of talking pictures and has a direct bearing on television and that the organization wants to continue its development along those lines.
If you can pardon some geekiness, this story several days earlier by Martin Codel for the North American Newspaper Alliance has a few specifics.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12—New eyes have been found for television in the form of photosensitive cells of infinitesimal size which can act as retinas in scanning actual or filmed images for radio transmission.
The cell is the invention of Russell Hart of Los Angeles, who discovered it in the course of experiments on improved talking motion picture systems.
So tiny that it requires a microscope to view it, the Hart cell's effective area is only two by four millimeters, and its thickness about one-sixteenth of an inch. It actually looks thinner than a single human hair.
It was described to the Federal Radio commission, when applications for television wave lengths were made Tuesday by engineers working with it, as an improved type of selenium cell which overcomes difficulties generally experienced with gas, vacuum and liquid cells and the older forms of selenium cells.
Dr. Arthur W. Carpenter, motion picture engineer and a former photographer for various Harvard expeditions, told the commission that the cell's chief advantage is that it can be used to prepare new and simplified scanning devices which do not "stop to think too long." Lag and Inertia, preventing the necessary instant translation of light into electrical impulses are among the chief problems in television.
Dr. Carpenter, in charge of developing the cell for practical use, and Dr. Ellsworth Dewitt Cook, chief engineer of the United Research corporation, appeared to request the television channels to pursue researches under actual radio conditions. They assured the commission that there was no stock promotion or other commercial scheme behind the development in its experimental stage.
United Research’s parent company, Brunswick-Balke-Collander, is the Brunswick connected with bowling and billiard equipment. But it also made radios—and pressed records on Brunswick label. And it also lost almost three million dollars in 19292.
It was the perfect company for Warner Bros. to snap up. Besides its movie business, Warners owned a bunch of top music publishers—perfect for artists on the Brunswick label to sing and be played over Brunswick radios. Those same artists could be signed to Warners’ film contracts. Oh, and Warners offered its Vitaphone talkies with sound on disc. It was a win-win. Warners bought the Brunswick music division in April 1930.3 And included in the deal was a brand-new “visual broadcasting station,” approved by the Federal Radio Commission the previous month4.
W2XBO was licensed to broadcast between 2000 and 2100 kilocycles (150 to 142.9 metres) and 2750 to 2850 kilocycles (109.1 to 105.8 metres) at 5,000 watts.
All these developments led to all kinds of speculation that Warner Bros. was going to leap into the radio business. Various reports claimed it was negotiating to buy WMCA or WOR in New York5. The Brunswick deal meant the company also controlled the National Radio Advertising Agency, which supplied recorded shows to radio stations6. Radio plus movies equals television. The potential was endless. Warners could test out its coming films with snippets on television. It could put its recording artists into people’s homes. The possibilities were almost endless.
Unfortunately, Warner Bros. never took advantage of it. Remember, at this point, all United Research had was a construction permit. It applied to the Federal Radio Commission on September 2 to extend the station’s construction permit until June 30, 1931 in connection with new equipment to be installed7. On December 15, 1930, the Commission reassigned TV frequencies; W2XBO was left with 2750-2850 kcs8.
Did the station ever get on the air? The New York Sun published an excellent weekly television page back in the mechanical era. Its issue of September 19, 1931 has an updated list of stations and states that W2XBO only had a construction permit, but its rotating disc was set to scan 60 lines per inch, the same all other New York stations. It had been granted an extension to its permit to December 31, 19319.
But an article in the Daily Star published at Long Island City on December 16, 1930 discusses local television, and after outlining the operating hours of the John V.L. Hogan station, W2XR, says “Station W2XBO, the other local television broadcast unit, confines itself to private experimental demonstrations.” The article omits the station from the list of ones that are able to send sound.
It adds:
A conservative view of the future of television is presented by Dr. E. D. Cook of Station W2XBO, who declared:
"The problems presented by television are so complex it seems to me they can not be solved successfully for several years. This seemed to be the general opinion at the recent Washington conference.
"Fly-by-night companies which have been attempting to make the public believe that television is a practical reality already have been harming intelligent research. Before expenditure of money on a television set can be justified many important problems will have to be solved.”
The last reference of the station in that newspaper is on November 4, 1931:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 —The United Research Corporation, Long Island City, has passed up an opportunity to protest at a hearing by an examiner of the Federal Radio Commission on the application of the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company, for a television broadcasting permit.
The United Research Corporation sends out its programs in the same band, which is included in the range sought by the new entry from Philadelphia. The Television Laboratory, San Francisco, also seeks this same band.
W2XBO wasn’t the only station using the same “band.” With huge amounts of national publicity on July 21, 1931, CBS put its W2XAB on the air. Unlike NBC’s W2XBS, it wasn’t content to broadcast a silent Felix the cat statuette on a turntable. It had living, breathing singers, dancers, musicians and comedians—and sound. The Associated Press of that date reported the new station would be on the air from 1 to 5 in the afternoon and 7 to 9 in the evening, seven days a week10. It would use the same frequency range as the Warners-Brunswick station.
When the New York Sun published the latest Commerce Department list of TV stations on February 13, 1932, W2XBO was not on it. The U.S Commerce Department’s Radio Service Bulletin for March 1932 has next to the station’s name “Strike out all particulars” (the same month, similar deaths came to TV stations W9XR, Chicago, and Harold E. Smith’s W2XBU, Beacon, New York).
United Research was still in business, and still researching television. It was assigned a patent on February 2, 1932 for a system where two vibrating mirrors jointly projected a beam of light to produce a picture11. In January 1936, the Long Island lab was moved to the Warners lot in Burbank12 then sold to RCA about 14 months later13.
Warner Bros.’ brush with television could be aptly summed up by a familiar title card from one of the studio’s cartoon releases.
1 The United States Daily, Friday, Aug. 29, 1930.↩
2 New York Herald Tribune, Apr 13, 1930.↩
3 Los Angeles Times, Apr 5, 1930.↩
4 Radio Service Bulletin, Department of Commerce, March 1930.↩
5 Variety, “Warners Hot After Its Own Network,” June 18, 1930.↩
6 Variety, “Warner Bros. Go Heavily Into Radio,” June 25, 1930.↩
7 Daily Star, Long Island City, Sept. 2, 1930↩
8 Radio Service Bulletin, Department of Commerce, December 1930.↩
9 The United States Daily, Wednesday, July 29, 1931.↩
10 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 22, 1931, pg. 2.↩
11 Electronics, Feb. 1932, pg. 72.↩
12 Daily Variety, Jan. 11, 1936.↩
13 The Hollywood Reporter, March 19, 1937.↩
One problem, of course, was that Warner Bros. had severe financial difficulties in the 1930-1931-1932 period, only barely avoiding receivership or bankruptcy, the fate that befell three of the other four "major" studios. They probably didn't have the money to invest in a technology that was likely years away from practicality (and would, in the event, be a dead end).
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