1968 - Communications, Media

Communications, Media

The U.S. first class postal rate climbs to 6¢ January 7 (see 1963; 1971).

Polish editor Jerzy Turowicz of the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny defies the authorities who have launched an anti-Semitic purge and makes sure that articles by Jewish writers are published when no one else will publish them. He invites poet Anton Slonimsky to be a contributing editor (see 1956; 1982).

Soviet writer Vladimir Yemelyanovich Maksimov (originally Lev Alekseyvich Samsonov), 37, resigns as editor of the communist literary journal Oktyabr to protest the invasion of Czechslovakia.

Paris newspaper cartoonist Franklin Loufrani, 25, celebrates the end of the student riots by creating a bright yellow circle with stretched polka-dot eyes and a wide smile (see Ball, 1963). He will register the trademarked Smiley icon in France in October 1971, extend rights to its use in more than 80 countries, and earn substantial sums of money from it, but U.S. manufacturers will use the feel-good icon without Loufrani's permission, and although Loufrani will claim the dubious distinction of having created the smiley face and register a combination of the yellow logo and the word Smiley in America, he will not be allowed to claim rights to either one of them separately.

New Yorker magazine cartoonist Peter Arno of emphysema and lung cancer at Portchester, N.Y., February 22 at age 64; "Katzenjammer Kids" cartoonist Rudolf Dirks at New York April 25 at age 91; "Little Orphan Annie" cartoonist Harold L. Gray of cancer at La Jolla, Calif., May 9 at age 74 (others continue the strip); St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly publisher Nelson Poynter dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at St. Petersburg, Fla., June 15 at age 74; New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger at New York December 11 at age 77 (he is succeeded by his son Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, 42).

A new Canadian Broadcasting Act passed in February takes effect April 1 designating the 32-year-old Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) as the agency providing "the national broadcasting service," with programming to be bilingual and predominantly Canadian in content, but the act provides also for some private ownership.

The U.S. television industry has advertising revenues of $2 billion, roughly twice the total of radio advertising revenues. Both industries derive strong revenues from cigarette commercials (see 1967; 1969).

Action for Children's Television is founded by Newton, Mass., mother Peggy Charren, 39, and three other women who are concerned about the violence and huckstering of unwholesome products on commercial programming directed at youngsters.

Sony Corp. introduces the Trinitron color television set.

World television set ownership nears 200 million with 78 million sets in the United States, 25 million in the Soviet Union, 20.5 million in Japan, 19 in Britain, 13.5 in West Germany, 10 in France.

60 Minutes debuts on CBS Television 9/24 with anchors Myron Leon "Mike" Wallace, 45, and Harry Reasoner in a magazine-style investigative reporting format devised by producer Don Hewitt, 45, that will continue for more than 30 years, with various other journalists (including Ed Bradley, Steve Croft, Dan Rather, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Bob Simon, and Lesley Stahl) replacing Reasoner and supplementing Wallace.

Radio announcer Westbrook van Voorhis dies of cancer at Milford, Conn., July 13 at age 64; former radio commentator Raymond Gram Swing of a heart attack at Washington, D.C. December 22 at age 81.

New York magazine carries an interview by Toledo, Ohio-born writer Gloria Steinem, 34, with the wife of former vice president Richard M. Nixon conducted aboard a plane on the campaign trail. Pat Nixon (née Thelma Catherine Ryan), 56, tells Steinem, "I haven't just sat back and thought of myself or my ideas or what I wanted to do. Oh, no, I've stayed interested in people. I've kept working . . . I don't have time to worry about who I admire or who I identify with. I've never had it easy. I'm not like all you—all those people who had it easy." "Pat doesn't have a mink coat," her husband told television audiences 16 years ago in his famous "Checkers" speech, and she tells Steinem that a "good Republican cloth coat" is still good enough.

President-elect Nixon calls the congressional Commission on Obscenity and Pornography created last year "morally bankrupt" and says that "so long as I am in the White House, there will be no relaxation of the national effort to control and eliminate smut from our national life."

The 911 emergency telephone number instituted in New York to summon emergency police, fire, or ambulance assistance is the first such system in the United States (see Britain, 1937). By 1977 some 600 U.S. localities with a total population of 38 million will have 911 systems.

Xerox inventor Chester F. Carlson dies at New York September 19 at age 62, having become a multi-millionaire from his royalties and appreciation of his Xerox Corp. stock. Determined to die poor, he has given away some $100 million to various philanthropies.