The Broadcasting Business (2)
Saturday, June 16, 1956. At last, HLKZ-TV went on the air.
The station stood in Jongno. It was the fifteenth television broadcaster in the world to open, and the fourth in Asia.
The opening drew Lee Ki-poong, Speaker of the National Assembly, still bearing his defeat in the vice-presidential race; Gal Hong-gi, Director of the Office of Public Information; Lee Eung-jun, Minister of Communications; Kim Tae-sun, Mayor of Seoul; and others of their station.
Even on the day of the ceremony, the permit to operate a television station had not been issued. The chief of the Radio Management Division at the Ministry of Communications scrambled a certificate together, and only moments before the opening began did Lee Eung-jun press it into the hands of Joseph Miller, president of HLKZ-TV. That was about the level at which the country was being governed in the 1950s.
Once again, Ki-jo was left out in the cold. All through the push to launch HLKZ-TV, the American president, Joseph Miller, was invited to Gyeongmudae, and Ki-jo was not. He had put up half the station's capital, and still they treated him as nothing more than a shadow financier.
Lee Ki-poong, an old acquaintance, came over and offered his hand.
"Do well, young Lee. A great deal is expected of you."
That was all he said.
Ki-jo didn't mind. The real power at HLKZ-TV was in his grip.
When the celebration ended, the principal guests turned to champagne and conversation. The wine for the distinguished company had been furnished by RCA, as befitted a giant. Ki-jo watched the faces gathered for the launch. Every member of the Patjuk Gathering had come, save only Lee Hwa-ryong.
As he took their congratulations, Chang Key-young, president of the Hankook Ilbo, spoke up.
"Channel 9 ought to do well from here on. You may count me among its most devoted viewers."
"Thank you, President Chang."
"But have the advertisements come in? Newspaper or broadcasting station, advertising is the lifeblood."
"A few have."
"And the historic first commercial—what is it?"
"An advertisement for Youngchang Industries' unbreakable Universal records."
"The records don't break?"
"Not that they can't break at all. They're pressed from synthetic resin, so they don't break easily."
"A station packed with new technology, and its first advertisement is for a product with the newest technology in it. Hahaha!"
Taking those congratulations left Ki-jo with an odd feeling. In the history he remembered, HLKZ-TV, wrung out by the trouble of keeping itself afloat, was sold in 1957—a bare year after it opened—to Chang Key-young, owner of the Hankook Ilbo. To be congratulated by that very man could only feel strange.
Now that the station had been laid on his shoulders, he had no intention of letting it die an easy death. Its transmitter put out a mere hundred watts. To mend the narrow reach that came of that, he had already asked RCA for television receiving antennas and coaxial cable, and he was making ready so that people beyond the coverage area could watch, the way they listened to wired radio.
"Are there no other advertisements?"
"There are. We've also taken one for Samsung's Cheil Woolen suiting."
Besides those, he had secured commercials from OB Beer, Crown Beer, the Gyeongseong Electric Company, Cheondo Pharmaceuticals, Sudo Piano, and others. The rates, of course, were not high. The firms knew how few sets had found their way into homes and could not name a large sum. But companies that made luxury goods came in willingly, with an eye on what television might become. Whoever bought a set was rich beyond any doubt, and so the target of the advertising was certain.
Ki-jo found it meaningful that landing the ads had also given him a chance to speak with other businessmen. When the Samsung commercial was offered, Lee Byung-chull himself had telephoned, and the two of them had talked.
"Before long, the President may summon you to Gyeongmudae. His Excellency holds men of the press in very high regard. Hahaha!"
Would he, though?
Ki-jo was skeptical. Kim Chang-ryong was gone, and yet he felt no particular tie to Syngman Rhee. He did not think the two of them would meet.
When the talk with Chang Key-young ended, Kim Doo-han shouldered his way in.
"Mr. Lee, the law hasn't been giving you grief, has it? If there's any statute standing in the way of broadcasting's growth, you have only to say the word to this Kim Doo-han. Hahaha!"
"Thank you, Assemblyman Kim. If anything of the sort comes up, I'll be sure to tell you."
Contrary to Kim Doo-han's worry, Korea had no broadcasting law. The country scarcely understood television itself, and so no law had been written. There was not even a regulation on how many hours a day a station might be on the air, what it ought to broadcast, or which costumes a performer was forbidden to wear. With nothing like a broadcast ethics board in existence, Ki-jo could compete as freely as the work itself allowed, on programming strong enough to hold its own. So long as he did not chafe the tempers of those on high, broadcasting was a fairly free business.
Of the Patjuk members, only Cho Choong-hoon looked unmoved. He came up beside Ki-jo and lowered his voice.
"Little brother. Is this business really sound?"
It takes a businessman to know a businessman's heart. Choong-hoon had seen what Ki-jo was doing—forcing himself through a venture that would be hard-pressed to turn a profit.
"It's all right, hyung. As you've always said: lose first, and win later."
"Tell me straight. How deep in the red do you expect this to run?"
"The aim is to hold the loss to no more than five million hwan a month."
"Not for a year. Every month...?"
Choong-hoon's eyes went round.
"It's all right, hyung. I'll find a way."
If anything, it was Ki-jo who ended up comforting him.
The ceremony ended, and a two-hour test broadcast began. June had turned hot. Air-conditioning was past dreaming of, and for the sake of shutting out noise the studio had no windows either. Performers and staff poured sweat as they set about making the picture. Dancers turned to the music of a musical theater troupe, and famous singers stepped out to sing.
When Park Jae-hong, the singer Ki-jo loved best, took up The Tale of the Turning Water Wheel, Ki-jo glanced at the thermometer hung inside the studio.
Mr. Park must be roasting up there.
The incandescent lamps flooding the studio had driven the air past thirty-two degrees. Afraid the cameras would overheat, the crew had gone so far as to buy ice from an ice shop and set it down beside them.
When the commercial break finally came, the guests following the broadcast let out a low murmur of wonder. It was the startling image in the advertisement for Universal records.
"From Universal, proud of the finest tradition and the finest craft—the unbreakable record is here."
With the line, a woman in a flared skirt appeared on the screen, dancing atop a record. A photographer named Choi Deok-su had made slides from pictures taken at Jangan Photo Studio, and as the plates turned, the woman in the photographs seemed to dance upon the disc. The method was primitive. To people seeing it for the first time, it was a shock.
The first commercial passed without mishap, and a comedy show came on, with the mandam patter artists Jang So-pal and Go Chun-ja. The moment the pair appeared, they opened fire with a routine fast as a burp gun.
"Mr. So-pal? Tell me, though—why are you called Jang So-pal?"
"Born in the time it took them to get to market and sell a cow, so they say. Market, cow, sell—Jang So-pal."
"Oh my. Then what are your family's names?"
"My brother's Middle-Pal, my father's Big-Pal, and my grandfather's Crooked-Arm."
The studio filled with people choking laughter down. The only ones who did not laugh were Ki-jo and the American cameraman. Humor of that old-fashioned fifties kind could no longer reach him. Every time the comedians came on, the staff strained with everything they had not to break.
In two hours they brought four programs and seven commercials safely to an end, and the first broadcast was over. Ki-jo encouraged the staff, the performers, and the American cameramen soaked through with sweat, then went with Hwang Tae-young into the technical president's office.
"You've worked hard."
At that, Hwang Tae-young's face flushed red.
"I was sure we'd prepared perfectly, but the moment we actually went on the air the mistakes poured out. I can't look you in the eye, sir."
The errors of opening day had run past ten in two hours. Ki-jo thought them only natural. The time to prepare had been short.
"It's all right. If you hadn't been here, we couldn't have gone on the air at all."
He lifted Hwang Tae-young's spirits the way one might soothe a general beaten in his first battle.
"I'm afraid of how the first broadcast will have been received."
"The department heads will be here soon. I'm certain the response was good. I looked out the window a little while ago, and there was quite a crowd in front of the station."
Ki-jo had set four of the largest twenty-four-inch televisions in front of the station so passersby could watch HLKZ-TV. Four or five hundred people had packed the sidewalk and spilled into the road, lost to the opening broadcast. He had placed sets in twenty-two other spots around Seoul as well, and at four of them—before the Cheongsan headquarters, at the model house in Jongno, at Seoul Station, and in Pagoda Park—he had posted department heads to read the crowd.
A knock came at the office door.
"Come in."
It was the Cheongsan department heads, back from watching how people took it.
Hwang Tae-young could not contain himself and put the question to them.
"How was the response?"
Among the department heads, every face wreathed in a smile, Kim Seogwang stepped forward.
"People kept asking me the same thing."
"Asking what?"
"Whether they can really watch for free. Whether we aren't going to come around later and charge them."
Everyone laughed. The other department heads had heard much the same. At catching the public's interest, it was a thorough success, and the programming itself seemed to have been good. But there was a problem.
"Plenty of them asked the price of a television, too. Most heard the figure, dropped their jaws, and backed straight off."
Yes. The problem was the price of a set. At the news of it, Hwang Tae-young's expression darkened a little.
"Don't worry too much about the price. Concentrate on getting the broadcast out. I'll see to the rest myself."
Uneasy as they were at the sweep of that assurance, they looked as if they believed him. If it was Ki-jo, there might be some answer. That hope was in the room.
Having brought opening day safely to a close, Ki-jo headed home with the department heads. At his house in Jongno a modest celebration had been laid. An enormous twenty-four-inch RCA television had been set in the main room, and there Sunrye, Soon-young, and Yeongsu were watching with Hyun-kyung's family and Seogwang's, all of them together.
When he came in with the department heads, the families congratulated him, saying the television was far too entertaining. He had gone without supper. Now he laughed with them and ate with appetite, and he could feel the excitement and pleasure of people laying eyes on a television for the first time in their lives.
After everyone from Cheongsan had gone home, Ki-jo sat on the low wooden platform in the courtyard and lit a cigarette. He looked at the moon and let out a breath of smoke threaded with a sigh. Every business he owned was in the black and charging ahead, and yet a growth far too large had fastened on and caught him by the ankle. Behind the glitter of the broadcasting business, a pit of losses so deep he could not see the bottom had opened its mouth.
He finished the cigarette and was sitting blankly when Sunrye came and carefully took a place beside him.
"You had a hard day."
"It was nothing."
"Are you worrying?"
"No. I just wore myself out with one thing and another today."
He smiled for her.
"If it's too much, stop. You already have so many businesses."
The smile did not fool her. She could feel that her husband was having a hard time of it.
"Even if broadcasting is hard, I like that it lets me do something that matters. If I give it up, I'll give it up only after I've tried everything I can."
He laid an arm gently around her shoulders and drew her in against him. Her belly had swollen high.
"It's been hard on you lately, hasn't it?"
"No. Soon-young helps with the house, so it isn't hard."
The baby was due in two months.
"There was one thing I always wanted to do, if I ever had a station of my own. I'm going to do it."
"What was it you wanted to do?"
When she asked, he quietly whispered the thing he had longed for. Moved by the ambition he confided, Sunrye held his hand tight and rested her head against her husband's shoulder.