Tomorrow: Television!
October 5, 2009
Here’s an interesting artifact, courtesy of the fine folks at Internet Archive. “Tomorrow: Television!” is an instructional film from 1945, produced for returning GIs and designed to tell them about job opportunities in the fascinating new world of “television.”
At about 1:30 into the film, look for some behind-the-scenes action — complete with 1939-vintage equipment — at General Electric’s experimental station in Schenectady, N.Y., WRGB.
RCA’s legendary chieftain, David Sarnoff, shows up about seven minutes into the film to read stiffly off of cue cards for 30 seconds.
The producers also include Gilbert Seldes, a producer from RCA’s rival CBS, who reports that the radio network has 62 people employed to create four hours of television per week, but they could easily employ “seven times” that number.
Seldes, whose 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts was adapted into a 1957 CBS anthology series, later helped found the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Remember, you men with radio and radar training are only a hop-skip-and-a-jump from the industry’s needs, and for you “WACs, WAVEs and SPARS,” there will be costume designing and makeup jobs.
