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July 24, 1931
"LQ*t us look at them, and soe what they really amount to. First, there is the danger of legislative inroads on the broadcast band of frequencies. Suppose, as the Glenn Amendment provided, that one channel is set aside for organized labor. Suppose the Foss bill had passed, and fifteen per cent of all our broadcasting facilities were turned over to educational institutions, 'JWiat v/ould happen? Do you think for a moment that agriculture would sit tamely back without demanding a share of the spoils? Kow about the demands of organized and commercialized religion? The moment Congress establishes the legislative principle that wave lengths within the broadcast band are to bo dealt out as rewards for political support, broadcasting as wo now know it in America is doomed,
"Remember that back of all the efforts of special interests to secure wave lengths for them.selves is a tremendous amount of pressure on Congress to destroy commercial broadcasting entirely, I don't think I need to toll you where most of this pressure originates.
Competing media, having tried vainly to discredit broadcasting as a profitable method of advertising are now trying to strike deeper, and to create a sentiment in favor of a tax-supported, advertising-free broadcasting system,
I do not think Congress will for the present anyway, enact legislation changing the basis of our broadcasting service. Such action would instantly provoke the wrath of fourteen million on the v/hole well satisfied set owners. The danger lies, not in legislative overturning, but in legislative chiselling. Take away a frequency herej a frequency there; crowd the survivors a little more closely together; put seven stations on a wave length where now there are four: this is the program of the enomdos of American broadcasting,
I.'iore than this, disgust and v/eary the listeners by forcing them to listen to hours of propaganda, dreary lectures, interminable reports this is the best possible way to kill off public interest in b roadcasting , and to lessen its value coirimercially , "
The first big legislative battle is to keep broadcast allocations out of Congress, he said, lamenting the fact that "in such a battle, a battle for existence, nine-tenths of the broadcasters are content to sit back and do nothing,"
He then reviewed the copyright situation and warned against the dangers of uncontrolled , monopolistic pools of copyright m.aterial. Broadcasters were asked to lend their entire support to a program which would lead to an ad¬ justment of this condition. Passage of the Vestal bill in the last session of Congress would have cost "every broadcaster in Am.orica many thousands of dollars," State legislation he said was another danger which had grown to enormous proportions during the last year.