Broadcasting (Oct - Dec 1950)

1936 (Continued from page 96) crease the cost of music for radio. At the NAB convention in July, Isaac D. Levy, WCAU Philadelphia and NAB treasurer, resigned his membership in NAB after a bitter attack on the policies of Mr. Baldwin and the majority of the NAB board, to which the convention responded by enthusiastically endorsing those policies. Warner Bros, rejoined the ASCAP fold Aug. 1, dropping its in fringement suits which by then numbered 180 totaling some $4 million, to the annoyance of the broadcasters who Mr. Levy ^ a d, fruitlessly they felt, paid Warner Bros, about $100,000 in license fees. The NAB Bureau of Copyrights, established in March with E. J. Fitzgerald, former musical director of WLW, as director, went ahead with its first job of cataloging music in the public domain and in the fall, having cataloged 16,000 copyright free compositions, announced plans to convert them into a 100-hour transcription library available at cost to NAB members. Lang-Worth Feature Programs, which had begun transcribing PD music the year before, in December announced that it had 200 playing hours of royalty free music ready for station use. Washington Declares ASCAP Illegal Monopoly Largely through the efforts of the Washington State Assn. of Broadcasters and its managingdirector, Kenneth C. Davis, Seattle attorney, the State of Washington declared ASCAP an illegal monopoly in violation of state laws, putting the Society's business there in receivership. E. C. Mills, ASCAP general manager, subsequently had this dissolved by agreeing that ASCAP in the future would deal with Washington music users in accordance with the state laws. A new music worry for broadcasters arose early in the year when the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia issued an injunction restraining WDAS from broadcasting phonograph records made by Fred Waring and his orchestra without his permission. This was the first legal recognition of performers' rights in phonograph record reproductions. National Assn. of Performing Artists, which had conducted the suit against WDAS in Mr. Waring's name, followed the decision with similar suits against stations in New York and Chicago. American Society of Recording Artists demanded licenses from stations at 5 to 15 cents a side for using records made by its members, which NAB advised stations to ignore. Meanwhile, claims that record broadcasts hurt record sales were disputed by music dealers who reported that radio was largely responsible for an increase of 150% in the sale of records since 1933. Better recording news came in January from FCC, which liberalized its rules for identification of recorded program material, ordering such announcements only once every 15 minutes or at the beginning and end of shorter record broadcasts. Transcribed Shows Bring Over $9 Million Perhaps stimulated by this action, transcribed programs played a bigpart in commercial radio during the year, accounting for $9,271,545 in national spot and $2,450,394 in local business, according to the analysis of 1936 business made by Dr. Herman Hettinger for the 1937 Broadcasting Yearbook. Total time sales, at one-time rates, for the year were $117,781,686, Dr. Hettinger estimated, divided into $59,743,860 for the national networks, 81,389,646 for regional networks, $24,648,180 for national spot and $31,800,000 for local. Leading types of advertising on the air in 1936 were foods, accounting for 18.2% of the total time sales; toiletries, 12.0%; drugs, 9.7%^^; automobiles 8.1% and automotive accessories, gas and oil, 7.3%.. Procter & Gamble Co. was the top network client in 1936, spending (at gross rates) $3,299,000 for network time. Standard Brands ranked second, Sterling Products third, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co. fourth and Ford Motor Co. fifth. Largest spot account was Chevrolet Div. of General Motors, whose WBS quarter-hour transcription series, Musical Moments, was broadcast three or five times weekly on nearly 400 stations. Political expenditures for radio time during the Roosevelt-Landon presidential campaign were estimated as totaling about $2 million. The Republicans started using ra dio in January with a dramatized series, Liberty at the Crossroads, placed on individual stations after both CBS and NBC had refused to accept political business before the party conventions and had questioned the propriety of putting political arguments into dramatic form. Communism was already an issue, broadcasters being soundly criticized both for their anti-Americanism in broadcasting Communist speakers and for censorship and discrimination in refusing time to this party while accepting programs sponsored by the Democrats and Republicans. CBS got itself boxed by both major parties for a late campaign broadcast by Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg in which he "debated" with President Roosevelt through recorded excerpts of the President's speeches of earlier years. Learning of the intended use of records only a few minutes before the speech was to go on the air, CBS first ordered the broadcast cancelled, then decided to let it go on, losing a number of stations who substituted other programs on receipt of the first order. February blizzards and March floods presented broadcasters in much of the country with their severest public service test, which they passed with universal acclaim as they stayed on the job and on the air around the clock day after day. They broadcast warnings, served as information centers and command headquarters for the Red Cross, military police, relief, firefighting and other agencies, and provided the only link with the outside world for many storm-struck communities. FTC Reports Radio's Offenses at Low Mark Radio also won praise from many former critics for the results of its efficient policing of programs and commercials. The Federal Trade Commission reported that out of 667,746 commercial continuities reviewed only 426 had been i;eferred to the FTC legal staff for secondary consideration. Following the example of CBS, Swift & Co. engaged a child psychologist to review its Junior Nurse Corps scripts; Blackett-Sample-Hummert employed another psychologist to check on its kid shows. Broadcasters attending the 14th SOME FACES SEEN at the clear channel hearings included (I to r): Left, Hoyt B. Wooten, WREC and WHBQ Memphis; A. S. Clarke, Washington engineer; A. L. Chilton, KLRA Little Rock and WGST Atlanta; W. H. Summerville, WGST, and S. C. Vinsonhaler, KLRA. Center: Lambdin Kay, WSB Atlanta listens appreciatively as Glenn Snyder, WLS Chicago plays "Temple Bells of Texas" on his dime harmonica. Right: William C. Gillespie, KTUL, Tulsa; Walter Bridges, WEBC Duluth; Don Searle, WIBW Topeka, and Edgar L. Bill, WMBD Peoria. annual NAB convention in Chicago, July 6-8, elected C. W. Myers, operator of KOIN and KALE Seattle, president; reappointed James Baldwin managing director; paid little heed to WCAU's withdrawal (five others pulled out within the next month and two new members came in, leaving the total membership at 404) ; set up a Sales Managers Committee with J. Buryl Lottridge, KOIL-KFAB Omaha, as chairman, as a division of the NAB Commercial Section headed by H. K. Carpenter, WHK Cleveland; voted $10,000 for the Joint Committee (of A AAA, ANA and NAB) for Radio Research; adopted a resolution encouraging the formation of state and regional associations as NAB chapters; kept abreast of all developments by reading the convention daily paper published by Broadcasting. Interest in Radio Research Increases Rapidly With both buyers and sellers of broadcast time eager for more accurate statistics, 1936 was an active year in radio research. The Joint Committee produced a county-by-county analysis of radio homes as of Jan. 1, 1936, estimating the national total as 22,869,000, 73.5% of all U. S. families. Paul F. Peter, chief statistician of RCA, was engaged as secretary, to carry out projects authorized by the committee. The Audimeter, mechanical device for measuring program reception developed by two professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robert F. Elder and L. F. Woodruff, was first used in a Boston survey and before the end of the year had been acquired by A. C. Nielsen Co. for eventual use for nationwide audience behavior reports. Edgar H. Felix, coverage specialist, began publishing Radio Coverage Reports as a bi-weekly service. ANA established the Advertising Research Foundation, to study all media, with Lee H. Bristol of Bristol-Myers as chairman. Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting, gaining acceptance as the gauge of program popularity, reported Major Bowes, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Rudy Vallee and Maxwell House Showboat as the most listened-to programs of the winter 1935-36. King Edward VIII's "woman I love" abdication broadcast at 5 p.m. EST Nov. 11, 1936, broke all previous daytime audience records with a rating of 45, CAB reported. A CBS survey found the average home radio set turned on 4.8 hours a day; an NBC study revealed the average (Continued on page 102)