The Pittsburgh Press (December 2, 1946)
Television hailed as new industry
Expert forecasts jobs for millions
Television will make new jobs for more than two million Americans, a television official told members of the Sales Executives’ Club of Pittsburgh today at a meeting in Hotel William Penn.
“Just as you have radio stations, radio stores and radio servicemen in Pittsburgh,” said Joseph Gerl, president of the Sonora Radio and Television Corp., “you will have television stations, stores and servicemen.”
In five years, he estimated, television will revolutionize home entertainment. Soap opera actors will be seen, as well as heard, and sports and musical broadcasts will also appeal to the eye of the listener, Mr. Gerl prophesied.
About 50 percent of the television shows will be motion pictures, travelogues and newsreels, he said.
“Speaking as a manufacturer myself,” he declared, “I cannot see that corporations would shift their normal advertising from the tried and proven media in order to go into a new untried field.”
Products which depend on “eye-appeal” or demonstrations for selling will benefit most from televised commercials, Mr. Gerl explained. More than half the department stores in the country, he said, have already made plans to televise fashion shows.