Giant Theater

FIRST IN THE WORLD TO ENJOY "TELEMOVIE" YOUR LIVING ROOM THEATER.

Thus newspaper ads last week announced the debut of subscription- television this summer in the growing Oklahoma oil town of Bartlesville (pop: 28,000), 60 miles north of Tulsa. Starting in June, Bartlesville TV families will be able to watch 13 first-run Hollywood films a month on their home sets, free of commercials, at a cost of $9.50, or 73-c- a movie.

For the U.S. at large, subscription TV is still a troublesome issue held at arm's length by the Federal Communications Commission. FCC has dawdled over pleas by such big companies as Zenith and International Telemeter for the use of public TV channels to broadcast scrambled signals that only the set of a paying customer could unscramble. Toll TV is bitterly opposed by those it threatens most--TV networks and movie exhibitors.

The Bartlesville scheme neatly bypasses FCC because, instead of the public air, it will use coaxial cable strung on telephone poles to link each set with the broadcast. And instead of alienating the local movie exhibitors, it has enlisted them as partners. The idea originated with Philadelphia's Jerrold Electronics Corp., which pioneered in wiring community antenna systems for towns too remote for ordinary TV signals. The company set out to persuade movie exhibitors that it would "give them a chance to get into the home and compete with TV on its own battleground." The idea appealed to Video Independent Theaters, a chain of 150 movie houses and 60 drive-ins in the Southwest.

For a start, the chain chose Bartlesville, where it will convert one of its three theaters into a subscription-TV studio. The town has a compact pattern of telephone poles, and it gets good TV reception from three commercial stations. Explains Jerrold President Milton J. Shapp: "We wanted to compete with TV rather than come in on the fringe of TV reception." Estimated cost of wiring Bartlesville: $350,000. For the subscriber the monthly $9.50 charge will also cover the cost of connecting a lead-in from the coaxial cable to an unused channel on his TV set.

The Bartlesville scheme will be watched closely from Washington, Manhattan and Hollywood. Says Shapp: "This will make it possible for exhibitors to reach an audience they have never before reached. By electronic means, the walls of the conventional theater are pushed outward to surround the entire city and make it a giant theater." If it works as well as surveys suggest it will, the company expects it to spread across the country and to cover special sport events, opera and live plays as well as movies.

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