NBC pulled off a major coup by getting the $5,000,000 Lux Radio Theater and Lux Video Theater to switch over from CBS. Lux will make the change next August, plans to expand its TV show from a half-hour to a full-hour program.

THE small, long-lasting nickel-cadmium storage battery, guaranteed to last five years, now being made for the armed services by Sono-tone Corp., will soon go on general sale for autos, trucks, etc. Cost: quintuple present prices.

CAMPBELL Soup has taken its $8,000,000-a-year soup advertising account away from Philadelphia's Ward Wheelock Co. (total 1953 business: $10,200,000) after 45 years with the firm and its predecessor. Its new agency: Manhattan's Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne (total 1953 business: $137,500,000). Reason, says Campbell: it wants a new kind of ad.

SOUTHERN Pacific has joined the New York, New Haven & Hartford in shipping truck trailers on railroad flatcars. The line is converting flatcars to handle trailers, is putting twelve piggyback cars with 240,000 Ibs. of merchandise on its Dallas-Houston, Fort Worth-Houston and Texas-Louisiana runs. ANHEUSERBusch, which opens -- its new $15 million Los Angeles brewery (TIME, Oct. 26) this week, is also looking for a bigger share of the Gulf Coast market. It is buying a 150-acre tract at New Orleans, will build a $20 million brewery with a 1,000,000 bbl.-a-year capacity.

SPORTS-car sales are growing.

Manhattan's annual nine-day International Motor Sports Show (92 foreign and U.S. cars) reported sales of nearly $2,000,000, almost double 1953 sales.

COTTON textile prices may start upward soon, says W. Ray Bell, president of the Association of Cotton Textile Merchants of New York, who thinks three years of recession have shaken down the industry to a firm footing. Production forecast for 1954: 10 billion yards of woven goods, just a shade under last year's peacetime record.

PHILIPPINE Air Lines, which now flies to the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, will probably drop its international routes and sell its fleet of 4 DC-6s and DC-6Bs. The government-subsidized air line needs $5,000,000 immediately to buy four Douglas DC-7s to compete with other carriers, another $15 million over the next ten years for jet liners. President Magsaysay would rather forgo the prestige of an international line, spend the money on rural projects and on improving domestic air service.

COFFEE prices may soar to $1.50 a Ib. within the next year. Brazilian coffeemen say that with inventories exhausted the losses from last June's frost are just beginning to be felt. They expect high prices for at least three years. Meanwhile, consumption keeps climbing; a supermarket survey shows coffee sales up 15% in the New York area, mostly because of scare-buying.

THE U.S. will spend $10 million in Europe by 1957 to help NATO planemakers develop a lightweight jet fighter-bomber, small enough to operate from short airstrips close to the lines, yet big enough to carry a tactical Abomb. The three most likely candidates: Britain's Folland "Gnat" (TIME, Aug. 3), a new delta-wing jet designed by A. V. Roe & Co., and a light French plane, the "Baroudeur," that can reportedly nudge the speed of sound.

THE Navy's huge (49 million acres) Alaska Petroleum Reserve may be opened to private capital. Though signs of extensive oilfields have been found (at a cost to the Navy of $50 million), no oil is being taken out, and all exploration has stopped. Alaskans, as well as Interior Secretary McKay, are in favor of letting private capital develop the area.

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