Broadcasting (Oct - Dec 1950)

1936 (Continued from page 98) auto radio in use 65 minutes daily ; CBS also surveyed 250 "very rich" families in Boston, finding an average of three sets per home, with average family listening just under three hours a day. Trans-American Broadcasting & Television Corp., ^vith $2 million capital and a charter wide enough to cover almost every kind of broadcasting enterprise, was launched with John L. Clark, former general manager of WLW, as presid e n t, arousing much industry conjecture. By the end of year Trans-American was acting as sales representative for WLW and a half-dozen other major stations and for programs produced at KFWB Hollywood, Warner Bros, station. The FCC in January set up rules for an FCC bar, with register of those qualified to appear before it. These attorneys soon afterwards organized themselves as Federal Communications Bar Assn. In March President Roosevelt spiked Mr. Clark attempts to make the FCC chairmanship an annually rotating office by reappointing Anning S. Prall as chairman. A complaint filed by WCOA Pensacola against wire line charges for round-about program transmission because AT&T had no repeater stations along the direct route resulted in a 50% reduction in the home company's "back-haul" rates. After an overall FCC investigation of line charges had revealed AT&T earnings from radio of $3,576,357 in 1935 (not counting radio revenue of associated companies, estimated at another $5 million), AT&T filed a new tariff schedule estimated as saving broadcasters $250,000 a year. Also in 1936: Members of the Distilled Liquor Institute, representing 90% of the country's manufacturing distillers, agreed not to advertise on the air as part of a 1937 THE YEAR 1937 was one of crisis and change for American broadcasters. From late winter floods which swept radio out of its accustomed role of public entertainer into the heroic position of the nation's number one public service agency, to December's FCC CONGRATULATIONS to Sol Taishoff from 25-YEAR-OLD K W K H Shreveport 50,000 WATTS CBS voluntary campaign of self-regulation in the public interest; the Treasurer of Cook County, 111., spent $20,000 for two weeks of radio announcements on Chicago stations, collected $10 million in back taxes during the same two weeks; Cream of Wheat Corp. discontinued sponsorship of Alexander Woolcott in favor of Buck Rogers. And: The United States Supreme Court, acting on an appeal brought by KOMO KJR Seattle against a Washington State Supreme Court decision upholding the state's right to impose a tax on radio stations, ruled that broadcasting is an interstate operation, not subject to state taxation; Mr. Murray NBC introduced its silk hat transmitter, first worn by George Hicks in New York's 1936 Easter Parade; Canada disbanded its Radio Commission and set up a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. modeled on BBC lines, which appointed Gladstone Murray, former BBC executive, as general manager at $13,000 a year; a survey of 74 colleges found 38 permitting broadcasts of football games, 36 forbidding them; National Advisory. Council on Radio Education found average capital investments in stations (excluding real estate, studios and services as too variable to average) to be $6,600 for 100 w, $30,000 for 1 kw, $63,000 for 5 kw, $224,000 for 50 kw, $582,000 for 500 kw; BROADCASTING opened a New York editorial and advertising bureau in August, and a Chicago editorial office in October, replacing "sti'ing" correspondents in those cities. announcement that many stations would have to move to new homes on the radio dial, the industry faced one emergency after another. When a vacillating NAB failed to handle the demands of the musicians' union that radio solve its unemployment problem, the station operators not only regrouped to meet this immediate emergency but began drafting plans for a more effective trade association. Meanwhile, they were individually altering labor policies to deal with newly-formed union committees instead of with individual employes as heretofore. And somehow, between crises, they found time to attend to business so effectively that time sales for the year topped the 1936 total by 20%. Prall's Death Brings FCC Reorganization FCC also underwent a reorganization in August, when the sudden death of Anning S. Prall brought in a new chairman, Frank R. McNinch, chairman-on-leave of the Federal Power Commission. Chairman McNinch started his clean-up mission by abolishing the Commission's broadcast, telephone and telegraph divisions, requiring all decisions in all cases to be the responsibility of the full Commission. Tacitly acknowledging criticism which had led to the introduction of several bills for Congressional investigation. Chairman McNinch announced that the Commission would henceforth live "in a glass house," backed up the announcement with a ruling that all correspondence regarding any license application would become part of the public record, including letters from Congressmen and other public officials. Commission action on the reallocations proposal drafted by FCC Chief Engineer T. A. M. Craven (who was appointed to FCC membership in August) and Andrew D. Ring, assistant chief engi neer, following the hearings of October 1936, was postponed until after the North American Radio Conference, held in Havana November-December 1937, could settle certain international frequency problems. Major Craven-Ring recommendations called for 50 kw as minimum instead of m.aximum power for clear channels, which were to be reduced from 40 to 25 with fulltime duplicate use to be made of the others; for inclusion of 1500-1600 kc in the standard broadcast band ; for power increases all down the line, and for substitution of "standards of good engineering practice" for the current empirical standards. Redistribution of broadcast frequencies among North American nations arrived at in Havana generally followed the Craven-Ring pattern and, due to the skillful negotiations of the U. S. delegation and its chairman, Comr. Craven, did not call for the elimination of a single U. S. station. Treaty did, however, call for shifts of 10 kc to 30 kc for a substantial number of stations, sugar-coating these enforced moves by proposing nighttime power increases from 1 kw to 5 kw for certain regionals and from 100 w to 250 w for local stations. International Broadcasting Interest Rises Individual U. S. operators of shortwave stations also reflected the new international interest, building new transmitters, including the first one in the West for trans-Pacific use, and increasing their foreign program service, particularly that for Latin American countries. NBC and CBS stepped-up appreciably their domestic broadcasts of Latin American programs as part of a PanAmerican exchange of program material. RCA became the first sponsor (Continued on page 104) Page 102 • October 16, 1950 BROADCASTING • Telecasting