Broadcasting (Jan - Mar 1949)

Five Weeks Until . . . IN JUST five weeks the NAB meets in Chicago for the 27th annual meeting of the nation's broadcasters. Although the official agenda won't show it, the convention, for many delegates, will be viewed as a "survival" session. Among those absent will be former broadcasters who turned in their licenses — AM as well as FM — since the last annual meeting in Los Angeles 10 months ago. They threw in the sponge. There are others teetering on the brink of economic collapse. They ventured without adequate knowledge of market or medium and some without adequate resources. Failures were and are inevitable. There are .lust too many stations in most of the markets, maior and minor. That's the way of free competitive enterprise. It wasn't necessary to overcrowd the AM band by ignoring the recognized engineering standards and thus degrading service. Since it's too late to reallocate, the laws of supply and demand must govern. The danger is that all radio can suffer because of the failures of the marginal stations. That does not have to be. If there were any doubt about the dominance of aural radio as the nation's No. 1 medium, the current Fortune magazine sui-vey should dispel that notion. That survey [Broadcasting, Feb. 28] revealed that people listen more than ever before to the radio, even with the advent of television. Of 14 leisure activities listed, 51% of the men and 54% of the women liked most to listen. As compared with three years ago 31% of those polled listened more: 29% the same. 24% less and 1% uncertain. Fortune called listening to the radio "the great common denominator." Certainly broadcasters have no reason to take a defeatist attitude. Radio has never attempted to sell itself. And the sales story is made to order. In the next five weeks broadcasters should ponder the job ahead. They should go to the NAB convention with their minds made up. That fundamental job, from where we sit, is to sell radio for all it's worth. Where else can an advertiser get so much for so little? Confusion Compounded WE'RE confused. The most threadbare term in the FCC lexicon is "woj-k-load." The Commission is months to year.s behind on docket cases, rule-making procedures, routine cases, international preparations, and what-not. The Senate Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee, under the lash of Chairman Ed Johnson, has moved in on the FCC to such an extent that even its normal snail's pace is slowed down. Plans for reorganization of the FCC into three semi-autonomous panels which could function simultaneously were nipped by the Johnson committee. Then the FCC, in the face of all this, proposes a new so-called Avco procedure which could result only in increasing its work. While the competitive bidding requirement of the Avco rule on station sales would be terminated, the proposed new procedure would extend the principle of advertising locally to all applications for new AM, FM and TV stations; "all changes in frequency, power, hours of operation, or directional antenna patterns. It does not require clairvoyance to fathom the result. Every do-gooder, every crack-pot. Page 48 • March 7, 1949 every politician with an axe to grind would be put on notice. The upsurge in hearing cases would be astronomical and public funds, as well as hard-earned radio dollars, would go down the drain of ill-advised hearings. And that's not all. During the same week that it dropped its Avco block-buster upon an unsuspecting and overwroght broadcasting art, the FCC tells the same Johnson committee, in answer to a series of atomic interrogatories aimed principally at TV regulation, that there's need for a "comprehensive network investigation." Perhaps there is. As the FCC points out, there hasn't been a network probe since 1941. But why not first things first? Why not clear the dockets of the long-pending cases? What about the TV allocations? And the ruling on giveaways. There's the issue of network representation of affiliated stations. More than a year has elapsed since the "editorializing" issue was clutched to FCC's bosom and the clear channel case started in 1938. We would judge the FCC is confused too. The panel organization, which the Senate committee erroneously held to be "not contemplated" by the law, is the only suggestion of merit yet advanced to break the bottleneck. It's worth the try. It would be of great help too if the FCC would place deadlines on its own operations, just as it requires all parties on the outside to meet such time limits on the filing of pleadings. If the present processes continue, FCC surely will be driven to the wall by the sheer force of its backlog of pending cases. Fat Pickings Slim FROM AUGUST 1942 to September 1948 the American Fat Salvage Committee collected 924,210,177 pounds of used fats. This collection materially eased the acute shortage of fats and oils for industrial use during the war. Recently the advertising committee, now defunct, of the American Fat Salvage Committee submitted its report citing the above figures. Most broadcasters who got the report started reading with some complacency. They had every right to be proud. It was due to their efforts, more than those of any other one media, that the fat campaign succeeded. In 1946, during the height of the drive, the Fat Salvage Committee conducted a survey which showed 89% of the women who saved fat heard about the campaign on their radios. In commenting on radio's part then. Wilder Breckenridge, director of the committee and a vice president of Kenyon & Eckhardt, New York, said the amazing number of women who heard the radio messages was "well nigh incredible if it weren't that such an outstandingly wonderful job is being done on the air by everyone concerned." With that background broadcasters had reason to expect something rather nice to be said about them in the report. But is it there? Not one line! There is a fine credit to newspapers for selling space to the Fat Salvage Committee. There is a long list of "acknowledgements" which covers just about everyone from the Coast Guard to the ANPA. But nowhere is there a line of credit for the marvelous job done free by American radio. Here's one more example of the way the printed media, with their highly organized and efficient promotion experts, have walked away not only with the millions of dollars in revenue which the Fat Salvage Committee paid for space, but also with credit for the success of the campaign — if one is to judge by this report. Radio's contribution is well known. But, as is often the case, radio fell down on one important phase. It promoted the fat drive successfully—it failed to promote itself. LEE ALLEN LITTLE A RADIO station "is not just a business . . . it's a civic institution." With this thought always in mind, Lee Little has successfully managed KTUC Tucson, Ariz., for the past six years. His spirit of public service and his bent for promotion have been gained not only through his managership of KTUC but through long experience at several stations. Radio-wise, Mr. Little started at 20 as a staff announcer at KFRU Bristow, Okla. Next step was chief announcer for four years at KVOO Tulsa. From Tulsa Mr. Little moved to St. Louis, working first at KWK and then KMOX. It was at KMOX that he began 15 years of association with CBS. While with KMOX, Mr. Little worked closely with Bryson Rash, now ABC Washington special events director. After two years as an announcer at KMOX, Mr. Little was transferred by the network in 1936 to its owned and operated WJSV (now WTOP) Washington in a similar capacity. At WJSV his experience really began to pay off. He was soon promoted to program manager and produced the original Professor Quiz program, first as a local show and later for CBS. His production duties took him from WJSV to CBS in New York where he devoted his time to the feature until 1942. Primarily an outdoors man — Mr. Little loves to fish and hunt — he left the Professor Quiz show for the Southwest and KTUC. As president and general manager of this CBS outlet, he has devoted his efforts to building a better station to more fully serve the community. His public service efforts are not, however, confined to station programs. Tucson is still talking about the KTUC Bondwagon and Bondbuggy (a Little idea) which sold War Bonds during broadcasts from the downtown area. A deliberately misspelled sign — "Waist Paper Here" — on the KTUC lawn helped collect many tons of paper during a waste paper drive. When the cruiser U.S.S. Tucson was launched in San Francisco, KTUC held a mock launching with a 30-foot replica in Tucson's University Stadium. Station, network and safety promotion were combined by Mr. Little when he originated his "Caution Before Speed" campaign. Signs placed in the Tucson area contained a large C, B and S, representing the network affiliation, plus the safety slogan and a plug for the station. Mr. Little feels this campaign really paid off over the 1948 Labor Day weekend. The state had nine fatalities but none was in the (Continued on page 52) BROADCASTING • Telecasting