Broadcasting (Jan-June 1933)

il^©AP€ASTfl CLnA Published Semi Monthly by BROADCASTING PUBLICATIONS, Inc. National Press Building Washington, D. C. Metropolitan 1022 Broadcast Advertisingr MARTIN CODEL, Publisher SOL TAISHOFF, Editor F. G. TAYLOR, Advertising Manager • Executive and Editorial Offices: National Press Building, Washington, D. C. Subscription Price: $3.00 a Year 15c a Copy Copyright, 1933, by Broadcasting Publications, Inc. Eastern Representative: The Spencer Young Co., 299 Madison Ave., Murray Hill 2-5279, New York City Western Representative: Warwick S. Carpenter, 29 E. de la Cuerra, Santa Barbara, Cal. Contingent Contracts AND STILL the per-inquiry racket continues to lead broadcasters and agencies, large and small, along dubious commercial paths. If ever there was one subject on which the whole industry should present a united front, it is this matter of contingent contracts. They can be made to look mighty attractive in lean days like these, and radio can deliver for such accounts. But why should broadcasters pursue a practice that no reputable magazine or newspaper will recognize ? With the observations of an important middle western broadcaster, who admits he has himself been guilty of the practice in the past, we heartily agree. He writes in a letter to the managing director of the NAB : "President Roosevelt has indicated a desire to have industry regulate itself, and it is high time that the NAB started to clean the skirts of its members from a host of unethical practices. One of the most valuable services the commercial committee of the NAB could perform this year, with the sponsorship of the board of directors, is to compile a complete list of all special inquiry cost propositions, the names of advertisers and agencies involved and those stations which are known to have accepted them. "This may sound like a drastic measure, but I feel, as a service to the industry, that we must kill these propositions, or these propositions will soon kill radio broadcasting as we know it today. I do not pretend to be wholly innocent in this regard, because some of them can be made to look mighty attractive. However, 98 per cent of them are pure gypping, and there are still a good many station managers who do not realize that they are not usually backed by good merchandise, active selling methods, proper distribution or merchandising plans. Without all of these, what good is radio advertising or any advertising?" We concede that it is practically impossible to get all stations to refuse these accounts, but we believe that the major stations, if they stood together in adamant opposition, could quickly kill this racket. The trouble seems to be that some of the best agencies and some of the leading time brokers and representatives have found some of the best stations willing to give per-inquiry accounts an occasional "shot." Here is a condition that the more farsighted element in the NAB ought to be able to persuade the shortsighted element is wholly inimical to its ultimate interests. A study and report on the economics of per-inquiry accounts, done by a recognized authority along lines of the Young report on agency fees, is a service that could very well be rendered under NAB auspices. Time to Stabilize THE RADIO Commission has a golden opportunity to contribute its bit toward President Roosevelt's campaign to stabilize business as the surest way out of the depression. Pending before it is the proposal of James M. Baldwin, NAB official and former Commission Secretary, that licenses for broadcasting stations be issued for the full term of three years as allowed in the law, in lieu of present sixmonth license tenure. Mr. Baldwin has enumerated to the Commission several unchallengeable reasons why licenses should be extended. The Commission has advanced no arguments to the contrary. The short-term license has been the root of most of the evils in radio regulation, since stations now exist virtually on a month-to-month basis. The Commission should act now, and give to worthy stations the reasonable assurance that they will not be disturbed by events in Washington as long as they perform their jobs properly. When Educators Differ "SHALL educational broadcasting be in the hands of privately appointed committees operating in New York on funds supplied by private foundations, working hand in glove with the commercial radio monopolies which are closely allied with the great power companies — such committees for example as the National Advisory Council on Radio in Education?" We quote from the May 25 propaganda sheet of the National Committee on Education by Radio, the educators' clique that insists on having a portion of the spectrum reserved for educational institutions in the face of the fact that such institutions that have radio stations have one by one been giving them up voluntarily for want of financial or public support. This quoted remark is significant, for it reveals how bitter the educators, with all their claims of liberalism, can get toward one another. The National Committee, whose aim has been to oppose the present system of radio in favor of a system operated by educators under state autonomy, is manifestly jealous of the success being achieved by the National Advisory Council, which has pursued the policy of utilizing the existing system for educational broadcasts and thus being assured of a listening audience. But hitherto the two organizations have at least rendered lip service to one another, each asserting that the other's work does not conflict with its own. Now we see them clawing at one another's figurative throats. The Na The RADIO BOOK SHELF THE SECOND listening area survey of each station of the CBS network has just come off the press, projecting forward its 1931 counterpart. Titled "Listening Areas, 2nd Series", this volume should be in the hands of every agency and advertiser placing radio business. Each station has a page devoted to it, containing a map showing primary and secondary listening areas representing minimum regular audiences. For each station a tabulation sets forth the number of counties in both primary and secondary areas, urban and rural population, total listeners, radio homes, per capita savings, residence phones, passenger cars, domestic gas customers, electric wired homes and annual retail sales. CBS regards the maps as "conservative measurements of the coverage areas" of each of its member stations, and points out the striking agreement between the first and second series of maps. THE AMERICAN Radio Relay League, Hartford, announces the publication of its new booklet. The Radio Amateur's License Manual, Number 9 of the Radio Amateur's Library. The new manual is a worthy companion to the other publications in the series of textbooks of amateur radio. Every detail of the complex procedure of securing and renewing and modifying amateur licenses for station and operator is set forth understandably and clearly. Published in a style uniform with other A. R. R. L. publications, with an attractive two-color cover. The Radio Amateur's License Manual is available from the publishers for 25c, postpaid. tional Committee, led by the crusading Joy Elmer Morgan and supported by the Payne Fund, wants the impression to prevail that the National Advisory Council, headed by Prof. Robert Millikan (Nobel Prize winner) and supported by Rockefeller-Carnegie Foundation moneys, is really the tool of big business. That impression won't take hold, for the fact is that most big endowments derive their source from commercial enterprise. Indeed, is it not a fact that the Payne Fund's moneys that endow Mr. Morgan's Committee originate in Standard Oil? This sort of holier-than-thou play-acting makes Mr. Morgan's group look childish. The networks and stations would welcome more bona fide educational broadcasts of the type being so ably presented under auspices of the National Advisory Council, but Mr. Morgan's group apparently is much more concerned with destroying the present system rather than utilizing it. Levering Tyson, director of the National Advisory Council, put it plainly when he pointed out that educational-owned stations cannot muster funds to conduct themselves so that listeners will tune them in. Mr. Tyson obviously was referring to Mr. Morgan's committee when he also stated at the New York meeting recently: "There has been undignified and unfruitful controversy * * * and little that smacks of scientific approach to the whole problem on the part of educators and broadcasters alike * * * ." As long as Mr. Morgan's group persists in fighting radio rather than lending its efforts to upbuilding education via the existing system, so long will it be looked upon by the industry as a racket by which a few zealots want to justify the jobs they are holding. Page 20 BROADCASTING • June 1, 1933