On 14 Dec 2011, at 7:01 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Largely due to Sarnoff's vindictiveness and
influence with the
postwar FCC, the prewar FM band was moved to 88-108 MHz and TV
channel 1 designated as the new owner of the old FM band. This, of
course, made all of the receivers sold by Armstrong useless.
Eh, close, but not quite. The 42-50MHz FM band wasn't actually created until March
1940; prior to that it was an experimental service confined to 42.6 to 43.4 MHz. The 1940
allocation did indeed overlap with the prewar allocation for Channel One; in fact none of
the pre-1948/49 allocations were clear channel; they were all shared allocations. What
really happened post-war is that channel one got dropped back to its pre-war allocation:
Channel one, 1938-1940: 44-50 MHz
Channel one, 1940-1946: 50-56 MHz
Channel one, 1946-1948: 44-50 MHz
It's interesting to note that the FCC didn't just screw with channel one, between
1939 and 1946 they changed the frequency slots for the lower 13 channels and in a stepwise
fashion dropped channels 14-19. The major rejiggering of the television and FM allocations
became effective in July 1940 with commercial FM broadcasting authorize to begin January
1941.
When the FCC initially moved the 42-50 MHz FM band to 88-108MHz Armstrong, who still had
some juice, had a fit and managed to get the FCC to re-establish the old 42-50MHz band to
help with the transition. The Big Four Armstrong licensees (Zenith, Magnavox, GE and
Stromberg Carlson) all made FM radios with both bands until 1949. The final disposition
of the 42-50MHz slot was to fixed and land mobile services.
Channel 1 proved to be less desirable than other higher-frequency
channels, due in part to the better long-distance propogation
characteristics, resulting in more interference.
And the fact that it was limited to "community" programming and a power output
of 1KW rather than the 50KW allowed the other channels. The television broadcasters were
none too thrilled about having to give up yet another channel (they had 19 in the
1938-1940 period) but decided it was far better to have 12 clear channels than 13 shared
ones.
Technical innovation the American way--racketeering,
legal maneuvers
and dirty tricks.
No argument there.
My uncle used to have an old Stromberg-Carlson set with the two-band
continuous tuner that would tune Channel 1.
A lot of 1946-1948 radios were dual band and would have been able to do so, since the
42-50MHz band overlapped with the 44-50MHz slot assigned post-war to channel one.
--
Dr. Christian Kennedy
chris at
mainecoon.com AF6AP
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