Evening star., 1948-07-25

HcTc, Will mo nlnSeII IN charge OF
the most powerful independent sta
ton in the Washington area as
soon as the change in power and
operating hours takes place. This
should be anywhere from six weeks
to two months from now when
WEAMs new transmitter is COM
pleted. AS soon as the station is
ready to broadcast with 5000, in
stead of its present 1000 watts of
power, it will begin the full time,
instead of the present dawn-to-dusk
operation.
Televiews:
AS you may have noticed last
Sunday night, WMAL -TV has
snagged that set of 26 Alexander
Korda films which the producer re-
leased to television. Sir Alec, you
no doubt recall, is the first movie
maker to give in to yideo's call.
while others still are regarding the
medium with suspicion. The pic
lures he has released for this new
form of free home consumption are
not new, of course, and he undoubt-
edly has got his money back on all
of them, but many of them are films
OF distinction. The series, titled
The Playhouse" opened last week
with Sanders of the River" and
will continue on Sunday nights at s.
Tonight's film is the Robert Donat
comedy, The Ghost Goes West"
Photoplays to follow include Elisa
beth Bergner's Catherine the
Great" Charles Laughton's Private
Life of Henry VIII" and Rem
brandt" The Scarlet Pimpernel,"
Things to Come" Elephant Boy"
Clouds Over Europe" with Lau-
renee Olivier, Thief of Bagtad'
and That Hamilton Woman" plus
II others.
Two entirely new local shows had
their premiere performances during
the week, via WNBW. On Tuesday,
Gene Archer's Music Shop" made
its first appearance, with Washing
tons most popular baritone (there
heard him at least once, someplace)
getting his first real opportunity
before the television cameras. He's
assisted by Pianist Ed Mcintyre and
will be regular WNBW Tuesday at
$50 feature from now on. The Sec
ond new show is "Tele-Pun," an
audience participation quiz conduct
ed by Johnny Bradford, Saturday
nights at $3.50. A third show was
to be heard and seen last week but
had its video debut postponed be-
cause of the Third Party convention
in Philadelphia. This is Connie B.
Gays hill-billy show, Gay Time" 1"
which will be televised Saturday
nights at from Constitution Hall,
starting this week.
That heat at the political conven-
tons was not the fault of the tele-
vision lights. With their latest video
cameras, the television engineers
call for less light than the newsreels
need and the boys would like the
world to know they weren't to blame.
/
Postscript to the conventions:
Politicians are going to have to
learn how to speak sensibly and look
sensible with the whole country
listening to and looking at them.
Listeners all over the Nation knew
more about the walk-out of the
Dixiecrats, for example, when one of
them was called to the CBS micro
phones and asked who their VICE
presidential candidate would be.
Said the Dixie candidate, "Ah CANT
call his name raight now. We jus
picked i'm little while ago."
The Local Scene: That Listeners
Symphony" on WQQW, the only
program in the United States spon-
sored directly by it's listeners,
reaches the end of that sponsorship
today on its 29th broadcast. Ex-
nausting the subscription fund does
not mean the end of the program,
however, nor does it mean a new
fund. The program will continue
"as a service of WQQW to the
listeners who helped it make radio
history" Variations on a
Theme (WTOP-Daily, Sis p.mD