Broadcasting (Oct - Dec 1950)

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1932 (Continued from -page 73) the first year, 47f for the second and 5% for the third, estimated to amount to a total of $3 million in 1933, $4 million in 1984 and $5 million in 1935. Assured by its committee that this is the best deal obtainable, the board reluctantly recommended its acceptance by broadcasters and dissolved the committee, giving Mr. Schuette plenary powers to deal with all copyright matters. Lower Power Outlets Get Reduced Fees Working with ASCAP on the license terms, Mr. Schuette obtained reductions on the fees for lower powered stations, about 36% for those of 500 w or less, 20-30% for the 1 kw operators. Dean Fitzer, WDAF Kansas City, Kansas City Star station, after a conference with Mr. Mills, wrote to a group of major newspaper-owned stations asking for the right to represent them in ASCAP negotiations, reporting hopes of securing substantial reductions "in view of admitted newspaper contributions to music exploitation." When ASCAP offered that group a 50% reduction in sustaining fees, with commercial fees applicable only to programs using ASCAP music, a meeting of all newspaper stations was called, at which it was decided to reject that proposal. Mr. Fitzer, Walter Damm, WTMJ Milw^aukee, and Lambin Kay, WSB Atlanta, were named as a committee to try to get a flat 33V3% reduction from ASCAP. Sen. Dill, denouncing the ASCAP offer of preferential treatment for newspaper stations as a plot "to use every possible influence of public opinion to keep down opposition to their tyrannical and arbitrary use of power," warned that acceptance by the newspaper stations would give new impetus to already proposed legislation prohibiting newspapers from station ownership. At NAB's convention, held Nov. 14-16 in St. Louis, Sen. Dill reported that he and Mr. Mills had worked out a formula whereby broadcasters would pay only for programs using ASCAP music, but that it had been rejected by the ASCAP board. He urged NAB to set up its own supply of music as the best insurance against ASCAP domination. McCosker Elected To Head NAB The convention elected as president Alfred J. McCosker, director of WOR New York, reappointed Mr. Schuette as copyright expert at $18,000 a year and also reappointed Philip G. Loucks as inanaging director, with a 10% increase to $10,000 a year and adopted a vigorous program for the coming year with plans for tripling or quadrupling the 1932 budget of $50,000 and employing a prominent public figure to lead the industry battle against those who were trying to alter or eliminate the free enterprise system of broadcasting. Mr. Loucks reported 178 active and 27 associate members in NAB, just about double the membership at the time of his appointment as managing director in November 1930. Commissioner Harold A. Lafount urged the NAB to wage war against overcommercialism which, he declared, was the industry's most vulnerable point. "Already," he stated, "an irate public is besieging their representatives in Congress for drastic action." Mr. Lafount decried the practice of permitting advertisers to build their own programs and .broadcast them with little or no station supervision, particularly the sale of blocks of time to "high powered salesmen" for resale to individual advertisers. The convention adopted a resolution proposed by Stanley Hubbard, KSTP St. Paul, for an investigation of AT&T line charges, reported to aggregate $8 million to $10 million annually, Mr. Hubbard charging that the rates were exorbitant and that they were not uniform. Broadcasters hopefully watched indications that the telegraph companies might begin competing with AT&T for the program transiTiission business on a national scale; Postal Telegraph was already leasing lines to Southwest Broadcasting Co.'s regional hookup. RCA Becomes Wholly Independent On Nov. 21, Radio Corp. of America and its subsidiary companies, including NBC and RCA Victor Co., became wholly independent through a consent decree entered by the U.S. District Court at Wilmington, Del. Settling without trial the anti-trust suit against RCA and its associates, the decree ordered General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. to divest themselves completely of their stock control of RCA. The decree also effected a realignment of the radio patent situation, with some 4,000 patents formerly pooled in RCA under an exclusive arrangement became nonexclusive. 'RCA, however, retained the right to continue to grant licenses to other manufacturers under the patents of GE and Westinghouse and AT&T as well as its own patents and to retain the royalties received from these licenses. During the interim period of two and a half years allowed for adjusting RCA's business to its new status, GE and Westinghouse were prohibited from manufacturing radio devices except under their own patents, while RCA was authorized to manufacture and sell transmitter and transmitting tubes formerly produced by the two electrical companies. David Sarnoff, RCA president, notified stockholders that in addition to continuing its earlier activities in broadcasting, transoceanic and ship-to-shore communication, radio manufacturing and entertainment, RCA received pat ent rights under the decree which would enable it to expand its manufacturing into new phases of electronics beyond the radio business. As a part of the settlement, RCA transferred its New York building on Lexington to GE and completed negotiations with Rockefeller Center for space in the Radio City project for occupancy in the fall of 1933. Alarmed over the danger of "trafficking" in licenses, the Radio Commission in February adopted a new rule requiring sworn statements of all pertinent details of the transactions to accompany all applications for the transfer of licenses. In April Thad H. Brown, general counsel of the Commission, had been appointed Commissioner from the Second Zone, succeeding Ira E. Robinson, resigned. During the summer the radio division of the Department of Commerce had been merged with the Commission as an economy move. Maj. Gen. Charles McKay Saltzman, chairman, resigned as Commissioner from the Fourth Zone, with the vacancy unfilled at the end of the year. Harold A. Lafount, acting chairman, in October urged the extension of licensing periods from six months to a year to provide more industry stability, but secured no immediate action. After Broadcasting had pointed out the dangers to United States and Canadian broadcasters inherent in the station-building programs of Mexico and Cuba, Sen. Dill introduced a resolution asking the Secretary of State, with the assistance of the Radio Commission, to negotiate international agreements with all other North American countries for their mutual protection against radio interference. Decision of the International Radio Conference, held in the fall in Madrid, to leave extension of the broadcast band into the long waves below 550 kc up to the individual regions, and the action of the Mexican government in granting superpower of 500 kw to XER Villa Acuna, which was authorized to operate alternately on 655 kc and 735 kc — both clear channels then being used in this country and in Canada — increased pressure for a North American conference, to be held in 1933. WIBO Chicago, operating under a stay order pending hearing of its appeal from deletion ordered under the Davis Amendment in November, filed suit against WJKS Gary, Ind., which had been assigned WIBO's frequency, and its principals, including Ralph Atlass, and against WBBM Chicago, which Ralph and Leslie Atlass had owned prior to its sale to CBS, charging conspiracy to force WIBO off the air and asking $900,000 damages. The Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia the Ralph Atlass following month handed down a decision reversing the Commissions' deletion order by a split vote, the majority holding that quota differences between Illinois and Indiana were insufficient grounds for wiping out a business worth $500,000 or more, while the minority opinion was that the Davis Amendment made the Commission mandatory. Meanwhile, Westinghouse tired of the need for constantly defending the use by KYW Chicago of "a frequency assigned to the Second Zone and offered to move the station to Philadelphia, the plan being endorsed by the Commission examiner as the best solution. When the Associated Press supplied election returns to the networks for broadcasting on election night, the reaction of certain newspaper publishers was so violent that the American Newspaper Publishers Assn. appointed a special committee to investigate the entire field of press-radio relations. The new committee was to woi-k as an auxiliary of the ANPA radio committee, whose former chairman, Elzey Roberts, publisher of the St. Louis Star-Times, had resigned when the committee refused to take what he considered a sufficiently strong anti-radio stand. Since his resignation he had made an arrangement with KMOX St. Louis to supply news bulletins to the station, not counting the numerous news tie-ups of this nature, there were at the end of 1932 a total of 112 stations with newspaper ownership or affiliation. Lindbergh Case Provides Opportunity The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby on March 1 had provided ladio an opportunity to demonstrate its own ability to report a major news event. WOR Newark broadcast the first report at 11:35 a.m. and immediately set up a remote control unit in the headquarters of the New Jersey police at Trenton, remaining on the air for 72 hours straight to broadcast developments. NBC and CBS rushed to Hopewell, N. J., location of the Lindbergh home, maintaining continuous operation throughout the following week. A realignment of frequencies outside the broadcast band became eff^ective in February, giving TV the 1600-1700 kc band adjacent to the new sound track channel of 1550-1600 kc, itself adjacent to the broadcast band. RCA began tests of video transmissions from the Empire State Bldg., using a mechanical scanning system but planning an eventual switch to the cathode ray all-electronic method of telecasting in the ultrahigh frequency region which engineers were coming to believe should be the area for TV operation. To avoid interference with WTMJ Milwaukee, with whom it shared 620 kc, WFLA-WSUN Clearwater, Fla., installed the country's first directional antenna, designed by Raymond Wilmotte, (Continued on page 78) Page 76 • October . 16, 1950 BROADCASTING • Telecasting