Football TV To Be Cut in Receipts Test

In an attempt to determine how much damage television is doing to football gate receipts, telecasts of football games will be drastically cut in the Greater Boston area next fall.

Different sorts of games will be broadcast each weekend from September 22 through November 24. On three Saturdays out of these ten, there will be a complete blackout in the area.

Schedules on other Saturdays will be: 1) One local game broadcast; 2) One local game and one game from another part of the country; 3) One game from another part of the country only.

After each weekend, the National Research Opinion Center of the University of Chicago will study the affects the curtailed broadcasting has on football attendance at games throughout the country.

The N. R. O. C.'s survey is being sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association which is spending 60 percent of the income members colleges earn from T. V. in order to carry through the research project.

The new policy was announced by Robert A. Hall, Director of Athletics at Yale and the N. C. A. A. director of the project on the east coast. Hall explained how the system would work in New Haven and William J. Bingham '16, Director of Athletics, explained how it would operate in Boston where some five football teams operate each weekend.

Besides the research project with controlled T. V., the N. C. A. A. is considering installation of "phonovision," whereby the viewer orders a football broadcast through a telephone call and has the broadcast put on his phone bill. Another system is "theatre-vision" which involves televising ball games onto movie screens and having audiences pay admission to watch the telecasts.

The N. C. A. A., which is operating the controlled T. V. project on a nationwide basis, enlisted the cooperation of the television industry in order to avoid charges of restraint of trade.