Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City

9 The Balance of Power Has Shifted

159 nine The Balance of Power Has Shifted Americans lived with the idea of television, the bewitching vision of it, for decades before the TVs themselves arrived like an army of flying saucers in department stores across the nation.Even before WSM radio went on the air, popular-science magazines showed people gathered around color television sets, and in 1928 Charles Jenkins, an inventor in Wheaton, Maryland, was issued the first TV broadcast license in the United States. In 1930 Jenkins broadcast the first television commercial,and the BBC began regular TV transmissions ,even though there were scarcely any television receivers to pick them up.Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworkin surpassed Jenkins’s mechanical model, developing the electronic television that became the global standard. In the mid-1930s the introduction of coaxial cable, which could carry phone and television signals, began to shape how TV would spread. AT&T began building a network to distribute programming across most of the nation, but not—at least for some crucial early years—in the South. None of this was lost on Jack DeWitt, who very much wanted to expand into television. He saw to it that WSM was the first Nashville broadcaster to obtain a television license in the summer of 1948. Edwin Craig had taken Harry Stone and George Reynolds to a citywide meeting of broadcasters to talk about television as early as October of 1944, but as the war wound down, it was unclear how fast or even whether National Life would pursue i-xx_1-286_Havi.indd 159 7/17/07 10:28:06 AM 160—air castle of the south TV. Craig was skeptical. He’d seen a milky, eight-inch picture in New York, and he wondered aloud to colleagues how that could amount to anything.He asked DeWitt and Stone to write up a study of the pros and cons of going into TV. “It was pretty bad,” remembered DeWitt. “It was an awful lot of money to take on.” Television would require new studios,built from scratch,with sets,lights, backdrops, props, wardrobe, makeup, and other things one didn’t need for even the most elaborate radio shows. At minimum, they’d have to develop and write shows covering news and public affairs,kids’interest,cooking,and fashion,and they’d have to figure out the infrastructure for taking cameras out on remote shoots. Moreover, WSM’s existing advertising base was national and regional. They scarcely even sold local spots, so how would they make money? Above all, Craig knew that unlike his radio signal, which blanketed more than half the United States, a TV station would scarcely reach the borders of Davidson County. That wasn’t going to sell any more insurance. But RCA/NBC was pressing its many radio affiliates to get into television. Irving Waugh attended a lavish meeting at Princeton in about 1948 where “General” David Sarnoff offered a glimmering vision of the future, where television would lead and radios would take on new roles in people’s lives. (To prove it,he produced the first portable transistor radio Waugh had ever seen.) Edwin Craig would have heard firsthand from his old friend Niles Trammell, now president of NBC,about television’s bright future.The hometown press was working Craig over as well. In a June 8, 1948, editorial called “Time to Catch Up,”the Tennessean accused all of Nashville’s radio broadcasters with foot-dragging on TV,especially WSM.“The public has every right to expect television this year from WSM—both because of its history as a vigorous and enterprising pioneer in radio as well as because of the clear-channel privileges ithasenjoyedsolongandprofitably.”Nashville,itconcluded“wantstelevision and wants it this year.” National Life tentatively promised to have a television station up and running in 1949, but didn’t come close. That May, a Tennessean story noted that “Nashville,a conspicuous blind spot on the television map of the United States, must wait another year—perhaps longer—before this amazing new baby of science opens its eyes in Middle Tennessee.” The story charged local broadcasters , WSM excepted, with getting a late start in applying to the FCC. By then,Memphis had an independent station.So did 40 percent of the country, including Louisville, Oklahoma City, Richmond, and many others cities of comparable size. “We’re not stalling,” DeWitt told the newspapers. i-xx_1-286_Havi.indd 160 7/17/07 10:28:06 AM [3.22.249.158] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 12...