A CARTOON in the New Yorker the other day showed
a portable TV set being brought down to a crowded beach. 'Calm your- self,' one of the sunbathers tells her indignant husband : 'it was bound to happen.' It has happened. At the Radio Show last week I went to look at the portable TV model which can be run off a car battery. It is not going to be on sale until the New Year, they told me, but by next summer it will have captured the beachheads, unless public-spirited citizens con- tinue to dig car-traps. The maker's representatives were telling people that what with the construction of the Earl's Court roof and the interference of rival products it would not be fair to ask for a demonstration. I asked for a demonstration. Reluctantly they lugged the set to a private room and switched on. It worked. They switched it to sound radio : thaf worked, too. VHF, they boasted cheerfully. I played my last card. Why, I asked, had the Radio Show authorities allowed them- selves to be held to ransom by the Electrical Trades Union for the third year running? Nobody could tell me. Every year the Radio Show people set up a howl when the ETU apply their squeeze; every year they give in. Why, I wonder, do they not make a No-strike-or-no-spow arrangement first?
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