A century ago, the country (and most of the world) had fallen in love with the freshly-minted concept of radio broadcasting, and some individuals were already thinking about tapping this nascent tool for other purposes. 

Harry J. Powers Jr. was one of these. Grand opera (broadcast live, of course) was a staple of early radio, and Powers devised what he thought might be a way to cash in by adding “sight” to sound in a forerunner of today’s televising of live events to theater audiences. 

Realizing that 1922 low-res TV wasn’t up to this, Powers devised a scheme in which opera performances would be “pre-recorded” on film (silently, of course, as “talkies” were still five years away) and distributing these to multiple movie theaters where they would be projected in synchronism with a live radio broadcast. 

The opera performers and musicians would also be viewing a copy of the film and “lip sync” their radio performance to the projected images. Obviously, all projectors would have to start at exactly the same time and remain in sync for this to work. 

While Powers did not claim to have all problems solved in connection with his “radio talking pictures,” he was optimistic about their adoption. (In addition to maintaining synchronism, other issues such as the ability of anyone with a radio receiver to “ride free” seem to have doomed the scheme, and there appears to have been only limited interest in deploying it.)

OTHER NEWS FROM TV’S PAST:

75 Years Ago: Television was at the forefront in discussions involving industry groups and the FCC. Even though post-war TV broadcasting had barely cleared the gate, a spectrum shortage was forecast and it appeared broadcasters would likely be losing some of their newly-apportioned channels. (Ultimately, Ch. 1 (44 to 50 MHz), which had been designated for “community” (LPTV) broadcasting, was reassigned for land mobile use.). 

Co-channel and adjacent-channel interference (due to short spacing) were becoming more and more common as new TV stations began taking to the air. A possible solution proposed by the FCC’s television section head was to allow stations to increase power by “10-fold or even 100-fold” to try and override the distant signals interfering with local broadcasts. (TV station ERPs were capped then at 50 kW; however, most were operating at less than 20 kW.) 

RCA heralded the development of a new image orthicon studio camera that required only 1/10 of the light required by conventional iconoscope cameras. The company claimed it could produce “brilliant, sharply-defined” images with light levels in the 100 to 200 foot-candle range. 

RCA touted savings in both studio lighting and “oversized air conditioning plants,” as well as the elimination of eye-straining glare in the studio. RCA also began shipping a console version of its very successful 630TS television receiver introduced the previous year. The new 10-inch model came with a suggested list price of $450 (more than $5,000 in today’s money).

50 Years Ago: The big industry news reported in June 1972 also came from RCA. This time it was in the video display area. After 18 years of development of delta-gun shadow mask color CRTs, the company announced that it was dropping this design and moving to in-line gun, slotted mask tubes, a design favored by most of the industry then. 

The new design had much to offer, including greatly simplified convergence adjustments. (RCA developed the delta-gun tube in an early-1950s “crash program” to create an all-electronic color television system, and continued to make improvements throughput its lifespan.) 

Elsewhere, employees at EECO (the Electronics Engineering Co. of California), a supplier of precision timing systems for scientific organizations, were still basking in the limelight after having been honored at the 1972 National Academy of Arts and Sciences Emmy Awards Banquet for their development of serial timecode equipment for videotape editing. (The EECO timecode would morph into the SMPTE timecode that’s still in use.)

25 Years Ago: The fallout from the U.S. analog to digital TV broadcasting conversion continues, with questions arising about the FCC’s DTV facilities allotments and replication of existing analog service. Dr. Oded Bendov, then Dielectric’s vice president of antenna development, suggested that in some cases it might require ERPs as great as 5 MW to replicate service, even though the FCC had limited DTV stations to 1 MW ERP.

Art Allison, then senior engineer in the NAB’s Science and Technology department, also questioned the FCC’s assumption of outdoor 30-foot-high receiving antennas, as many viewers used indoor antennas. Allison also called attention to potential interference due to short spacing of stations in the new table of allocations. 

Sony and National Mobile Television demonstrated the first live broadcast of 4:2:2 SD television with a 16:9 aspect ratio. 

CBS’s Joe Flaherty urged broadcasters to make the digital transition as quickly as possible, warning that: “No standard and no spectrum assignments last long unused…and any lack of interest or inaction on the part of broadcasters and manufacturers will result in challenges to the digital spectrum assignment and in the proliferation of incompatible transmission standards by the computer industry and by the competitive media.”

With the passing of Joseph Flaherty, former senior vice president of Technology at CBS last month, I had the opportunity to discuss Flaherty’s life and professional contributions with a few industry leaders. One thing I learned seems particularly apropos to where the TV industry stands today.

While Flaherty is credited as perhaps the No. 1 broadcaster advocating for development and adoption of a digital high-definition television standard and a treasured right-hand man to former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley who chaired the FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service at the time, another theme emerged as I spoke to various associates about Flaherty.

That trend was pegging film for termination in the television industry. As Bob Seidel, CBS vice president of engineering & advanced technology, who was mentored in his early career at the network by Flaherty, wrote in marking his passing:

“His [Flaherty’s] foresight led to the replacement of 16mm film to gather news, supplanting it with Electronic News Gathering (ENG), thereby eliminating the painstaking and time-consuming process of exposing the film negative, transporting the film to the station, developing the film and transferring the film to television.”

Even Flaherty’s advocacy of a new digital HD television standard was motivated in part by the desire to get film out of TV production with the goals of saving time, expense and effort to produce episodic television, I learned in my conversations.

[Read: Remembering Dr. Joe Flaherty]

The lesson for today that the television industry can take from Flaherty is: Don’t fear jettisoning the past and embracing the future—not recklessly, but with forethought, planning and purpose.

Who could imagine NTSC rather than digital HDTV in today’s living rooms across America? What Hollywood TV producer or station news shooter pines for the days of film?

We stand at the threshold of the next generation of television with countless opportunities within grasp and little certainty about which will prove to be winners, and which will end up as mere footnotes in some future Wikipedia citation.

Regardless of the uncertainty, however, now is not the time to cling to the past but to embrace change prudently and begin to carve out another successful generation for television.

Dr. Joe Flaherty, former Senior Vice President of Technology at CBS and an instrumental figure in the worldwide development of high definition television died last week at the age of 87. TV Technology reached out to some of his industry colleagues for their remembrances of Joe.  

Peter Fannon was president of the Advanced Television Test Center and recently retired after a long career with Panasonic.

"It is very hard to imagine a television world without Joe Flaherty. He was—over six decades—a persistent force for global technological progress and industry advancement. Whether responsible for conceiving, building, or integrating new technologies and systems, Joe was a master at inspiring—and yes, sometimes terrifying—others in order to accomplish with him the progressive changes he could foresee would improve television for both content creator and broadcast company, for both TV viewer and online consumer alike.

His personal drive was, to be sure, formidable. He was relentless in pursuit of the new and better, the smarter and more efficient ways in broadcast and satellite spectrum use, studio and newsgathering design, camera and recording technologies, computer-generated imaging, facilities and network interconnection, and display technologies of all sorts. Throughout his career he supported or led research and development in-house, and he worked tirelessly with manufacturers around the world to bring to life new concepts in all of these arenas. He spent uncountable time traveling and working with broadcasters in all parts of the globe, and in international standards bodies, seeking to align ever-improving television technologies in order to effect easy global program exchange, and to spur competition for the best solutions whatever the issue.

Most famously, it was Joe Flaherty who first propelled the notion of high-definition TV in the United States, calling up all his persuasiveness to rally engineering, business and then political forces to bring “advanced television” to American broadcasting. Under the aegis of the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service (ACATS)—which he had lobbied to have created—he chaired the all-important Planning Committee, which set out the technical and operational criteria for what became, barely a decade later, the world’s first all-digital HDTV terrestrial broadcast system. 

And during that time he gave time and attention to every advanced TV system proponent in order to solicit the best ideas; participated in every Advisory Committee meeting and activity; served on the Board and technical committee of the Advanced Television Test Center; spoke frequently to domestic and international gatherings about the television of the future; and lobbied Members of Congress, Commissioners of the FCC, and both White House and Federal agencies’ leaders on the need and means for a smooth, nationwide transition to the new system.

It will be impossible indeed to see and enjoy television at all without thinking often of the passion, commitment and contributions of Joe Flaherty to making it all happen."

Richard Wiley is former chairman of the FCC, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Advanced Television and is partner at Washington, D.C., law firm Wiley Rein.

"I worked closely with Joe during the eight-plus years of ACATS (FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service). He always kept his eye on the end game—high definition television. We had people suggesting systems that were lesser than HDTV but that was never going to be satisfactory from his standpoint. He helped develop the rapid deployment of HDTV on a worldwide basis and I learned a lot by reading a number of his papers.

He was a true visionary and could find pragmatic solutions to the innumerable technical problems that we confronted during those eight years. For example, when we had to test these different systems, he went to the NAB to lobby for developing the Advanced Television Test Center—he was instrumental in getting it built.

I went with Joe on many international trips and everybody knew him, he was the ambassador for television at large. He was known worldwide and I don’t think anyone else had that status—he was a unique figure. He was soft spoken but determined. He might have ruffled some feathers from time to time but he had a dream. He and Mark Richer were the two engineers I relied on the most because they would always give me the unvarnished truth as they saw it."

Larry Thorpe is Senior Fellow at Canon U.S.A. and spent more than 20 years at Sony Electronics pioneering the development of HDTV and digital production technologies in the U.S. broadcast and motion picture industries.

"My positive response at an initial meeting with Joseph Flaherty in the mid-1970s was probably the fact that we were both of modest physical stature. But I was soon to learn that his industry stature soared far above my own. Maybe it was my being Irish that formed the early bond between us (he regularly vacationed in Ireland). While that manifested itself largely in cordiality over the next decade whenever we sporadically met, it was to blossom into a working bond in the early eighties when then Dr. Flaherty learned that I was Masahiko Morizono’s point man on driving Sony’s HDTV agenda in the U.S. The very close relationship between those two giants was forged more than a decade earlier when Joe Flaherty’s drive behind electronic newsgathering was flanked by Morizono-san’s drive behind ENG cameras and recorders—first the Umatic and later the Betacam.

At a time when HDTV was looked askance at by most broadcasters, Joe Flaherty had instantly seen the future of video imaging and indeed the future of broadcasting. If he was relentless in his drive on ENG, he was positively titanic in his unwavering leadership on HDTV. His vision of 1080/60.00 as a potential worldwide HDTV production standard never faltered over the next decade and a half. I spent countless hours with Joe at endless formal meetings of the various HDTV standardization groups, the multiple strategy sessions within CBS, and supporting the never-ending demonstrations that he organized at every conceivable venue around the globe. While the latter could at times create tensions between us, Joe would always make things right with a fine-dining lunch or dinner.

Leadership emerges under various guises but Joe Flaherty based his on a sharply focused determination that was at times disguised by his remarkably quiet voice. Entanglements with the separate and competing HDTV agendas of European broadcasters, the computer industry, and Hollywood never daunted Joe. His international diplomacy was unwavering as he sought to persuade all to his mission of a unified HDTV standard. And indeed, Joe could be uncannily persuasive. The emergence of the worldwide 1080-line HDTV standard (albeit at international frame rates) is testament to his persistence.

I was sad to see Joe fade quietly from the world scene over the past decade—but impressed and heartened by the fact that he was in his eighties when he did start to withdraw. Everything he dreamed about over the past 50 years—from ENG to HDTV—are today colossal global realities. Joe Flaherty can surely rest in peace having left a legacy of jobs superbly done. Goodbye, my mentor."

Mark Richer is president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

"Dr. Flaherty’s lifetime commitment to the advancement of television technology was extraordinary. Among his many contributions to the industry was the pivotal role he played in the formation of ATSC in 1982. He served on the ATSC Executive Committee and Board of Directors until 2010 when he was named to the honorary “Member Emeritus.”

Dr. Flaherty’s unwavering commitment to the standardization of HDTV was contagious, motivating the industry to develop the highest quality system possible. He had the vision to understand that the specifications for HDTV should not be limited by the capabilities of the cameras and displays available at the time.

Joe pushed industry groups to establish long term strategies often quoting one his favorite proverbs, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”