The technology wasn’t there yet.
Television was around in the late 1920s. By mid-1931, a number of stations were on the air but they were hampered by all kinds of things. One was lighting. An incredible amount of light was needed to make something visual. Even then, anyone appearing on the small screen required large amounts of ugly make-up to be seen.
Much of the programming being offered by the handful of stations, in the U.S. East and Midwest, was on film, or were photographs and silhouettes. NBC pointed its camera at a figurine of Felix the cat on a record turntable, and it spun around and around and around. Not very exciting programming.
CBS decided it was going to put its radio stars on the tube in live programming. However, cameras were very limited in picking up anything, even in a brightly lit studio, and they could pick up little more than head shots.
Still, for hobbyists, this was a world of marvels.
What’s on the Air magazine published a two-part feature on television. Part two appeared in the June 1931 issue and we reprint it below.
Television Peeps Around the Corner
By Don Davis
STATIC is not going to bother television much. A recent demonstration of television reception in New York during an electrical storm proved this point. Excepting for slight white streaks flashing across the screen coincident with the lightning, no harm was done and the pictures flicked on unmolested.
During the past few weeks there have been a number of interesting developments along the television front.
The Columbia Broadcasting System has definitely announced that it will be on the air throughout the summer with an experimental television program daily for six hours.
Some, months ago CBS selected Natalie Towers, a young and very beautiful actress, as its television girl. Last week NBC announced that it had signed Dorothy Knapp to fill a similar role there.
Meanwhile WGBS and W2XCR are continuing their sight-and-sound broadcasts with very encouraging results.
Chicago and Boston likewise are continuing television programs, although nothing startling has been reported from either of these cities in the way of new developments. Boston will be on sixty-line scanning after June 1, as will Station W3XK in Washington. All New York stations have adopted this standard.
Make-up on the faces of artists who appear before the television camera is considered of utmost importance. Such make-up is neither like that of the stage nor screen. It is more vivid and of the most grotesque color combinations.
Charles E. Butterfield, radio editor of the Associated Press, who has been making an exhaustive study of this phase of the new industry, told this writer that red-headed girls are the best for television, with the brown heads a close second. Blondes are not so good, because there is not sufficient contrast.
Noses are dangerous to beauty when it comes to the television camera. If not properly powdered and colored by grease paint, they look unnaturally large and very, very red.
During its summer experiments the Columbia System plans to employ a number of its sustaining acts. "Those who have had motion-picture experience," Edwin K. Cohan says in a recent statement, "will be televised from time to time. Morton Downey and the Dodge Twins are foremost in this group."
Other reports from the large broadcasting stations show that a tremendous army of theatrical people are seeking to establish themselves for television. At the present there is little hope for them, especially since the networks are going into the new field only in an experimental manner for the time being.
As the technique of television is improved, so will a new art be born — an art entirely different from the motion-picture world and the sound-broadcasting studios, an art which will be individually and wholly adapted to the new science.
Reactions of the general public to television are sometimes very amusing. For example, some average radio listeners are of the belief that television has been perfected to the point that pictures with the clarity of present-day movies are obtainable with simple equipment.
True enough, pictures are available from quite simple equipment, but they are not anywhere nearly so clear as movies of even ten years ago.
For example, television reception is such that only the head and shoulders of the subject can be seen with any great clarity. Two people in the picture are the limit for the televisor of to-day. Background detail is missing. However, television has progressed. It is marvelous — even miraculous — that pictures of any kind can be transmitted hundreds of miles through nothing more substantial than air!
Television to-day is sending you pictures of old film, wooden cats, dolls and pictures of orchestra leaders, and the like. Of them all, the silhouettes (black and white action pictures) are the most interesting. Why? Because they have action, and plenty of it.
To this writer's way of thinking, television will be given its first real impetus when the two nationwide radio networks begin to conduct experimental programs.
Then, there's the high cost of equipment. Is there any reason why television receivers should cost so much?
If you possess a short-wave receiver, one which will tune from 100 to 200 meters and one that should possess wide band tuning and resistance-coupled audio, you need only the televisor. Yet this televisor, employing a synchronous motor, a scanning-disk, a neon tube and a magnifying-glass, will cost you (completely assembled) somewhere in the neighborhood of $100.
With all these so-called drawbacks television is here and it is going to stay with us for some time to come. Prices will be cut. They've got to be cut. Programs will improve, and sight and sound will be successfully synchronized.
By 1933, most of these stations went off the air for good. CBS and NBC went into hibernation. Only W6XAO in Los Angeles continued with regular programming through the 1930s after signing on in December 1931. During that time, NBC worked to develop a modern, electronic system, which was unveiled at the New York World's Fair in 1939 after a number of test broadcasts. Whether people knew it or not, television may have still been "around the corner," but it was also here to stay.
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