Broadcasting (Oct - Dec 1950)

1931 (Continued from page 67) apiece for radio campaigning; General Electric TV station telecasts one-act drama, The Queen's Messenger; Maytag Co., washing machine manufacturer, sponsors first program specially recorded for radio, records produced by National Radio Advertising Inc. under direction of Raymond Soat; number of stations dropped to 677, July 1; industry's gross time sales for" 1928 estimated to be $14,100000. 1929: CBS reorganized Jan. 3, elected William S. Paley president; Procter & Gamble Co. this year made first use of daytime radio and Bulova Watch Co. sent recorded announcements to more than 100 stations for broadcasting together with time signals; NAB in March adopted a code of ethics for the industry; Dr. V. K. Zworykin demonstrated his kinescope TV receiver to IRE meeting at Rochester, N. Y.; 618 stations operating in November; 1929 industry gross time sales put at $26,800,000. 1930: Pentode tubes for radio receivers introduced; first roundthe-world broadcast travels from Schenectady to Holland to Java to Australia and back in less than a second; NBC opens experimental TV transmitter in New York; CBS broadcasts pre-Christmas series with different sponsor in each city, announcements being cut-in locally, series includes pickup from Amsterdam, first international origination of commercial program; 612 stations operating; gross time sales up to $40,-500,000 despite worsening business conditions. As of midyear 1931, according to a report compiled by Dr. C. B. Jolliffe, chief engineer of the Federal Radio Commission, there were 612 licensed broadcasting stations, 90 operating on clear channels, 284 on regional channels and 238 on local channels, but of the total only 420 were on the air simultaneously at night — 45 clears, 187 regionals and 188 local stations. Only 14 stations were licensed for the maximum permitted power of 50 kw. All stations licenses were for six-month periods. A News Journal Is Born To The Young Radio Industry That was the status of broadcasting in 1931 when two young Washington reporters, Martin Codel and Sol Taishoff, launched Broadcasting as the news journal of the broadcasting industry with the intention, as they said in their first editorial, "to report, fairly and accurately, the thoughts and the activities that motivate the field of broadcasting and the men who are guiding and administering broadcasting." The partnersi^ip and Dr. Jolliflfe dual management lasted until 1944 when Mr. Codel sold his interest to Mr. Taishoff', who is now sole owner, editor and publisher. Some of the dangers facing the broadcasters of 1931 were set out in the first issue of the new magazine by Henry A. Bellows, former member of the Radio Commission who had become a CBS vice president and a leader in industry affairs. A major danger, Mr. Bellows wrote, was Congressional encroachment on the Radio Commission's function of licensing stations, and he noted that earlier in the year the Senate had approved a bill which would allocate a clear channel each to labor, agriculture and education. Ill-advised state legislation Avas another threat, he said, adding that it probably could be defeated, but only after a long and costly fight. A third danger was the results of the "virtual abdication" of the Commission to the Court of Appeals, so that a Commission on hearing was regarded as merely the preamble to appeal and a "good Washington lawyer has become more important to every broadcasting station than a good chief engineer." Another major threat to industry progress, Mr. Bellows declared, was rate cutting and the readiness of many stations to accept advertising "which destroys public confidence or lessens public interest." A fifth hazard was the lack of unified efforts by broadcasters in attacking their common problems. As minor dangers he lumped together copyright troubles, the demands of other North American countries for broadcast channels, the Commission's "inexhaustible capacity for procrastination," and the Davis Amendment and quota system, designed to insure an equitable distribution of radio program service throughout the land by setting up quotas of broadcast units for each state and regional zone. Many, Varied Demands Besieged Radio Mr. Bellows might also have posted danger warnings against the demands of many educators and educational groups for Government guarantees of more time on the air, either through station assignments or by having a definite proportion of all stations' time set aside for educational programming. Broadcasters were also concerned over the complaint of Sta-Shine Products Co. to the Interstate Commerce Committee against NBC's rates, which the complainant charged were "exorbitant," as the case was a test of the ICC's power to regulate the rates of broadcasting stations as it did those of railroads and other common cai'riers. Another potential threat was the campaign of H. 0. Mr. Carpenter INDIVIDUAL pictures used in this section are contemporary photographs showing the individuals at about the time mentioned in the text. Davis, publisher of the Ventura (Calif.) Free Press, for the support of other newspapers in his crusade to abolish commercial radio and its increasing competition wdth newspapers for advertising. Still other problems were raised at the ninth annual convention of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, meeting Oct. 26-28 in Detroit. H. K. Carpenter, W P T F Raleigh, chairman of the commercial broadcasting committee, urged broadcasters not to cut rates or to sacrifice progi-am quality to commercial expediency and warned them to view with suspicion offers of free programs, educational talks and the like as probably concealing advertising copy for which the stations should be paid. He reported a committee decision to issue a standai-d market data form for station use, despite doubts of the committee of the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies with whom it had been discussed that it includes all the information the agencies want. The committee also asked for support in persuading the Radio Com . mission to reduce its requirements for identifying all recordings used on the air both before and after their broadcast and for identifying transcriptions as such rather than lumping them in with phonograph records as recordings. Elliott Warns Industry To Watch Its Step Frank W. Elliott of Davenport provoked a heated discussion when he decried the general acceptance of such objectionable commercials as those with women reading cigarette copy and the broadcasting of off-color songs, warning that unless the industry did its own regulating "we will have Congress shove this down our throats." John Benson, AAAA president, said that while there was yet no agreement on station coverage or the right w^ay to measure it, the agencies were watching with interest the program checking system of Archibald Crossley. He said that time brokers were unfair when they represented competing stations and supported a proposal that the NAB create an "Open Time" office in New York if it could give agencies the information they require. (Earlier that year a group of 21 stations had set up Advertisers Radio Service as a cooperative representation service and after it disbanded in October, William G. Rambeau, its manager, had started his own firm as the first exclusive representative Mr. Rambeau of radio stations in the U. S. ) President Hoover, in a pooled network broadcast to the convention, praised the American system of licensing stations under private enterprise as having produced "far greater variety of programs and excellence of sei-vice without cost to the listener," and by avoiding the pitfalls of government broadcasting, had "preserved free speech in this country." Harry Shaw, WMT Waterloo, was elected president (then an unsalaried post) for the coming year and Philip G. Loucks was reappointed managing director. Mr. Loucks reported that the NAB had 135 active members, up from 83 the year befoi-e, and 28 associate members, down from 35. In November ASCAP notified the broadcasters that a new scale of license fees for the right to broadcast the music of its members would go into effect on Feb. 1, at the expiration of the cun-ent oneyear licenses, without stating what the new scale would be, arousing fears that radio would be called on for a larger payment than in 1931, when the aggregate industry bill was estimated at about $1 million. Broadcasters also hoped to secure some standard form of payment to replace the haphazard and inequitable arrangements of 1931. The death in December of Julius C. Rosenthal, ASCAP general manager, caused a postponement in setting new rates and the old licenses were extended until March 1. The Commission in November reminded stations that the requirement for keeping their signals A\ithin a deviation of 50 cycles, down from the 500 cycle deviation previously allowed, would become effective in June 1932, a year after its adoption, and that equipment capable of keeping the signal vvithin those limits should be installed before that time. The Commission announced that station identification need be announced only every 30 minutes, instead of every quarter-hour, with no need to make the announcement exactly at the hour or half-hour if doing so would interrupt a single consecutive speech. Recording announcements were also reduced to one preceding each disc, •with the language left optional as long as it clearly identified the program material as recorded. Reduction of License Period Recommended In its recommendations to Congress the Commission asked that the maximum license period be reduced from three years to one year, requested authority to suspend stations up to 30 days, recommended exclusion of territories from the quota system and a revision of the appeals provisions to permit appeals from any Commission order or decision. Also recommended was a new section of law making it illegal to transmit a program originating in the United (Continued on page 72) Page 68 • October 16, 1950 BROADCASTING • Telecasting