"A Little Opium"

Both CBS and RCA have been waiting more than a month for the Federal Communications Commission to decide whether it will authorize color television. This week CBS gave FCC a nudge, announced that it will offer color television for industrial and scientific uses, over closed telephone lines which are not involved in the color decision.

CBS made a deal with Remington Rand to build and sell the camera-and-receiver TV unit. Expected cost: about $20,000.* CBS thought that medical groups, which for some time now have been viewing operations in color TV, would be the likeliest customers. CBS and Rand hope also to sell the system for relaying corporate meetings to stockholders, and for classroom use. As for the eventual mass consumer market, CBS Vice President Adrian Murphy quipped: "You have to smoke a little opium before you really can see its potential."

* Toll charges will be relatively small: a New York-to-Washington hookup, for example, would cost customers about $30 an hour on an eight-hour-a-day contract.

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