Evening Star Newspaper, December 7, 1928, Page 47

THE EVENING STAR, BROADCASTERS TRY [0 FAVOR ALL FANS Analysis of Time on Air Shows Effort to Diversify Programs. The people who listen to radio proe grams have complaints to make from time to time. The persons who don't like classical music complain that there’s too much “high-brow™” music on the air. The ones that don't like jazz request less syncopation. Others | complain because there are too many educational talks, and still others want more broadcasts of an instructive or| informative nature. An analysis of one week of pro- grams broadcast from one of the| radio stations operated by the National Broadcasting Co. reveals that the radio | program builders are considering all | listeners and are attempting to give every listener a share of the time on the ‘ai The average time on the air for this | one radio station is 100 hours a week. | Some days the station is on longer than 14 hours a day and other days the transmitter is in action for less than 14 hours, but the average remains about the same the year around. 17 Hours’ Classical Music. this 100 hours, approximately 17 s a week is devoted to classical and semi-classical music. Ten hours of the 17 may be taken up by or- chestras, ensembles and other instru- mental groups and 5 hours may go to vocalists with a classical repertoire. The remaining 2 hours usually is de- voted to opera. Jazz enthusiasts receive 14 per cent of the broadcast time. Programs of dance music varying from 15 minutes to an hour take up 14 hours of the 100 available. The progr#m makers devote 9 hours of the week to health broadcasts. Some of these broadcasts are in the form of radio setting-up exercises, while others are talks on health by acknowl- edged authorities. Talks of interest to women—house- keeping, cooking, clothes and personal appearance are among the subjects taken up—average about seven and a half hours a week. Educational talks of interest to the adult members of the average family—and in this group every subject under the sun is eventually dis- cussed—occupy about eight and a half hours of the week. Programs for Children. There’s something” for youngsters on | the air every day and this takes up three hours and a half each week. Religion and religious broadcasts are on the air every day—use eight and a of | hours a week. Mexican Telephones Idle As Subscribers Protest 5-Cent Toll By the Associated Press. LAREDO, Tex., December ‘Three hundred telephones in Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from: here, were idle | Wednesday night, recelvers dang- ling from hooks, as the result of a fight begun by subscribers of the | | Mexican cit7 against the new 5-cent toll charge instituted by the Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. Citizens of Laredo and Nuevo | | Laredo have sent a protest to | | offictals in Mexico City against | | the rule requiring an evtra nickel | | to converse across the Rio Grande Nuevo Laredo subscribers band- ed together when the, order was put in effect and lifted their re- ceivers from the' hooks, blocking service. They have refused to “hang up.” —_ Evercady. hour, Gen- | eral Motors Family Party and Collier's hour are classified as presentations. Programs of popular music, neither jazz nor classical, but of general appeal, usually take up about 13 hours a week, Two or three hours a week is devoted to public service broadcasts, though such events as national conventions, presidential addresses and radio cover- age of big news events will raise the average in the course of a year. Radlo dramas have an average total | of two hours a week. The remaining hours are taken up in programs that cannot be inéluded in a general classification, such as broad- | casts of sports events, brief inspirational addresses, news bulletins and the pres- entation by radio of national celebritics. | IAGHINEREPLACS %10 3 TESTES Device Hemoves Error * of Human Element in Radio Tube Making. By the Associated Press. BLOOMFIELD, N. J.. December 7.- So accurate that it seldom fails, 3 fast that it takes the place of f 25 to 30 girls, a machine is festing 8,000 radio tubes an hour in a faciory which turns out nearly a million tubes a month. The machine removes the chances of error by the human element that enter into one of the tmp tions in tube manufacture—the fi The former method was to have a girl, handling 200 tubes an hour, test each one on a t eq ters, as many as 15 t quired to keep a ce moving out on pro The attention necessar test sets operating alike erable. was consid- Develop Machine. To overcome the defects of hand- testing, engineers of the Westinghouse Lamp Co. developed a machine which picks up the tubes from a carrier belt, automatically performs ecach electrical test and then sorts them by these classifications : 1. Broken filaments and all types of short circuits. 2. Gassy and low emission tubes and Both Sides of 7th at K BUY YOUR Freed-Eiseman " FROM US for service and satisfaction RADIO DEPT. lany having electrical leakage between the elements. 3. Tubes outsi of the specified range for amplification constant, plate resistance or mutual conductance. 4. Good tubes. The machine has an electrical control board, with meters, connected by a cable to the mechanical apparatus |which cuts the tubes into the test cir- cuits. Attached to the mechanical ap- paratus is an ejecting device and mov- ing belts which carry the “defects” and good tubes away. Automatically Handled. Tubes are automatically placed in | sockets equally spaced around a rotat- {ing disc having contact rings and brushes. As the disc turns, each tube is successively connected into special |circuits for testing. Arrangement of ) | the contacts is such that the test cir- cuits are first connected, allowing me- | ters and relays to come to a fixed posi- tion before an ejector circuit is in posi- tion to function. | The ejecting mechanism consists of | solenoids located opposite the three "rhnh into which defective tubes are sorted. The tube is ejected when the «olenoid pushes plunger that forces it out of the socket. The good tubes must clear the three defect positions before they are pushed out by a cam. The first circuit ejects tubes with | broken filaments or short circuits. The | second remo ssy and low-emission tubes. The thi oves out the tubes with incorrect operating characteristics. Each circuit has control relays which are essentially meters. Instead of point- ers, the meters have arms which make contact between an upper and lower range and are adjustable to sult any condition, Signal lights indicate the operation of the various circuits. All circuits are designed so that a failure in the test apparatus throws all tubes out at one defect position, eliminating the possibil- | ity of a defective tube reaching the packers The Gift That Lasts Freed-Eisemann Radio Free Home Demonstration Without Obligation Dorians 704 10th St. N.W. Main 774 “Just Around the Corner WASHINGTON, D. FRIDAY, DECEMBER T, 1928. IANTICIPATES BOOM IN'RADID BUSINESS Commissioner Lafount Enthusiastic Over New Allocation. Is A boom in the sale of radio receiving sets is anticipated by Radio Commis- sioner Harold A. Lafount as the direct result of the reallocation. Predicting that sales will increase by the “hundreds of thousands,” the fifth zone commissioner declares that when the new set-up finally shakes down to good working order reception condi- tions will be so vastly improved that listeners will not be satisfied to use ob. solete equipment. a letter to all radio manufacturers, The operation of high-powered sta- tions on cleared channels likewise seen as a stimulus to sales in neighb ing countries. American progra free from interference and with suf- ficient power to be picked up, will be available in Canada, Mexico, Cuba and - He outlines this in | e a large portion of South America, he states, and unquestionably will mean a steadily increasing demand for Ameri- can manufactured receivers and speak- ers for these countries. Commissioner Lafount joins with his colleague, O. H. Caldwell, in condemn- ing the use of antiquated receivers by people who are fastidious about their reception, but kick about poor condi- | tlons. The stations and the commission can engineer the ether so that good, clear signals will pervade home, they hold, but if a poor receiver is used good radio cannot be produced. There are about 12,000,000 receiving sets in operation, of which 7.000.000 are considered modern and the remaining 5,000,000 crystal sets or other obsolete types. The reallocation, he says, “with- out doubt has benefited the owners of good receiving sets, but to those less | fortunate who are still wsing insensitive | or out-of-date equipment the allocation | will bring perhaps only a substitute for | their favorite station. Only a “very few thousands” of the 12,000,000 set” owners have adversely | | eriticized the allocation, either to the commission or to the broadcasting sta- tions, he says. In so far as investiga- tions have been made of such com- plaints, “over 90 per cent of the trouble r was traceable to the receiving Commissioner Caidwell also deplorndi the use of old recelving sets. He | thought that people should be able to | enjoy the radio of 1928 when they had | a chance. With the poorer sets they | Jere still getting the radio of 192¢ and (Copyri 1928, by Consolidated Press.) “KER-CHOO” Stop that COLD in the Sneeze Stage No need to “doctor” days for a cold and to run the chance of having it develop into grippe or flu. Take the thing that's spe. cifically for a cold—HILL'S CASCARA-QUININE tablets. These famous tablets end a cold intwenty-four hours, because each combines the four helps required: 1. Breaks up the Cold 2. Checks the Fever 3. Opens the Bowels 4. Tones the System That's the quick and completc action a cold requires and oni: HILL'S supplies it. 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