THE PLAIN DEALER, SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 1965 ETV Leaders Differ on Audience Area Solid lines indicate the estimated range of a consistently clear signal with equipment WV1Z-TV is now installing and with, the antenna located in North Royalton. Dotted lines indicate the range with equipment generating a million watts of power and with the antenna located at Exit 13. The inner line in each case represents "city grade" coverage, the most intense signal, mm Dealer sketch coming! Superior Man... with powers for beyond those of mortal man and who, disguised as Clark Bent, feeble-minded car salesman for SUPERIOR MOTORS, fights a never- ending battle against his arch rival, Simon Crud (an unscrupulous competitor) to give his Chrysler, Imperial, Plymouth and Valiant customers the lowest prices and best service in town! Don’t H 4 By HARRY LENHART JR. Should the newborn Cleve land educational television station due to begin opera tions next month become the programming base for a large area of northern Ohio? Or should it focus only on metropolitan Cleveland and its close neighbors? The new television station will bring educational aids in to the classroom. The pro grams also can be picked up in homes equipped with the proper type of receiver. A REGIONAL SETUP, ac cording to two Cleveland busi nessmen involved in the move ment to establish ETV here, promises greater economies, a better financing base and higher quality programming. But the board of trustees of the Educational Television As- sociation of Metropolitan Cleveland (ETAMC), the non profit organization sponsoring the new station, has failed, the two men say, to give regional ETV serious study. The two businessmen are Richard S. Luntz, vice presi dent of the Luntz Iron & Steel Co., and L. C. Michelson, di rector of public affairs of Republic Steel Corp. Michelson is a trustee of ETAMC and also a member of the nine-man Ohio Educa tional Television Network Commission (OETNC), the in dependent state agency re sponsible for developing a statewide ETV network. Luntz had been cochairman of an earlier ETV group whose recommendations even tually resulted in the forma tion of ETAMC. ETAMC OFFICIALS have called proposals made by Luntz for a regional station technically impractical. The antenna location Luntz sug gested for the larger regional setup would result in shadow ing (signal weakness) in parts of Cuyahoga County, the very area to be served, according to these sources. “We are a Cleveland sta tion,” said Louis S. Peirce, chairman of the ETAMC board. “Channel 25 is allo cated to Cleveland and not to northeastern Ohio. Our re-i sponsibility is to provide service to Greater Cleveland, not to other communities to the south.” The shadowing problem can easily be corrected, said Luntz, by a satellite trans mitter situated in the weak signal area. (But a source close to ETAMC officials) said that would be expensive and constitute, in their view, an engineering “compro mise.” “If any compromise is to be made, it should be in favor of Cleveland and not Canton or Youngstown,” he said. AMA CHRVSLSfc-IWPERlAL 2223 Superior PLYMOUTH valiant CH 1-6920 THE CITIES Luntz consid ers within reasonable range of a Cleveland-based regional station include Youngstown, Massillon, Canton, Alliance, Niles, Warren and Wooster and scores of smaller com munities in between as well as Elyria, Lorain and Paines- ville, which ETAMC already plans to serve. To achieve this coverage Luntz thinks a transmitter capable of generating a mil lion watts of effective radi ated power is necessary and that the antenna should be in the vicinity of Ohio Turnpike Exit 13 at Streetsboro. His suggestions, Luntz said, are based on an engineering study made at his expense by a firm of radio engineering consultants in Cleveland and on talks with ETV experts around the country. The transmitter for the new Cleveland station, which will have the call letters WVIZ- TV, will generate at the out set substantially less than a half million watts. The an tenna is being mounted on a tower owned by Radio Station WERE on Ridge Road in North Royalton. THIS ANTENNA, however, will eventually be replaced by a more elaborate one, which will generate as much as 600,- 000 watts of power, according to Peirce. The WERE site, where the transmitter is also located, is not regarded by ETAMC as a permanent one although it has a 10-year lease arrange ment with the owners of the radio station, who have also applied for one of the other ultra high frequency TV chan nels assigned to Cleveland in addition to WVIZ-TV’s Chan nel 25. Dr. Richard B. Hull, execu tive consultant of ETAMC and also chairman of the State ETV Network Commission, warned that “it isn’t valid to believe that just by doubling your power you're going to double your reliable coverage area or range. All you do basically, is intensify the sig- nai in the original range,” he said. Another ETV expert, Cleve land RCA sales manager Wil liam Weisman, agreed. “You would have to in crease your effective radiated power five times to notice any substantial change in cover age,” he said. The predicted range cf WVIZ-TV is 40 miles. Hull, nevertheless, said ETAMC is expected to go to a million watts eventually. SAID PEIRCE: “If we find at the end of a couple of years it seems advisable to broaden our scope, we can by certain modifications of the transmitter go to higher power without substantial cost. But we didn’t see the need to do that initially.” “I don’t feel,” said Luntz, “that ETAMC has a complete ly objective consultant in Hull because of his tie with the Ohio Network Commission.” “Most stations with a pure ly local orientation have had a tough time raising enough money to meet the costs,” Michelon said. “Most of the single com munity ETV stations in the country,” Luntz said, “have been and are in some type of financial trouble because they have not been able to sustain an adequate operation due to insufficiency of funds. ‘I am personally confi dent,” countered Peirce, “that we can quite adequately sup port this station with the area we cover under the present plan. We’re not confined to Cuyahoga County. We’ll get into Lorain, parts of Geauga County and down into Medina County.” “FURTHERMORE,” he added, “it’s enough of a prob lem to try to coordinate our programming with the cur ricula of the 30 or 40 subscrib ing school systems In the county and adjacent areas. That problem would be com pounded if you go beyond this area,” he said. School officials in both Ak ron and Canton are seriously interested in subscribing for the Cleveland service because neither of the applicants for the Akron-Kent UHF channel Kent State University and the University of Akron— were planning classroom in struction programs. The two applicants are pri marily concerned, said one Akron school official, in cul tural and university-level in structional programs. One objection to a regional set up is: How do you interest a Youngstown audience in a program on a Cleveland is sue, such as the sidewalk con struction scandal here. Luntz’s rejoinder is: How do you finance sustained and intelligent attention to con troversial community issues of any kind unless you have broad-based support? New Role Is Seen for Newspapers TUCSON, Ariz. UB — John N. Heiskell, 92, editor of the Arkansas Gazette, declared yesterday that a newspaper may have “to suffer afflic tion” if it is to be a moral force and influence in its com munity. Heiskell made the com ments as he accepted the University of Arizona’s John Peter Zenger award “for dis tinguished service in freedom of the press and the people's right to know.” Heiskell described the events in the 1957 Little Rock school integration crisis and the role his paper played. “There was urgent need for a strong voice for public peace, for law and order and for obedience to the courts,” Heiskell said. “For day after day, in front-page editorials, our paper denounced the ac tions that had precipitated the tragic events that bandied Little Rock’s name across the country and around the world.” The editor said as a result of its stand, circulation dropped from 100,000 to 83,000 and some advertisers can celed ads. “We did not retreat an [inch,” Heiskell said. “Calm did return, and in time s o did our readers.” Heiskell, said “a newspap er may have to make the cru cial choice between the safe and easy way and the hard and hazardous course that is the line of duty.”