Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan - Mar 1951)

MOWN NAMED COUNSEL For NARTB-TV :ia| id Mr. Brown THAD H. BROWN Jr., special >arther in the law firm of Roberts k Mclnnis and counsel for Tele\sion Broadcasters Assn., will take office March g as counsel for .he TV branch of 'ihe National \ssn. of Radio & Television Broadcasters, successor .0 NAB (see NARTB story sage 23). Mr. Brown was ippointed TV counsel at KARTB by the TV board of directors as TBA gave up the ghost ;xcept as a legal entity. He has resigned from Roberts & Mclnnis. Decision to keep TBA alive until I . April 1 as a legal entity was ached Tuesday at a conference of TBA board members. A board : neeting was scheduled but a quorum failed to appear. Present were Jack R. Poppele, WOR-TV New York, TBA president; Frank M. Russell, NBC; Joseph A. McDonald, ABC; Paul Railbourn, Paramount Television Productions; Will Baltin, ;ecretary. Mr. Baltin, TBA secretary-treasirer and executive secretary for 'seven years, resigned to join Screen . jGems, video subsidiary of Columbia Pictures Corp. He had been with the Allen B. DuMont TV interests prior to joining TBA. At Screen Gems he is to produce and act as general sales manager for 1 Buid m I NO TV CENSOR SCOTUS Upholds Lower Courts THE U. S. Supreme Court last Monday upheld a decision by two Federal Courts that the state cannot censor motion picture films sjftshown on television. The court in Washington refused Jto review the ease on an appeal brought by the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors. In January 1949 the board had .ordered that films must be cenJjl Jsored. The order was attacked by ' several Pennsylvania broadcasters. U. S. District Judge William H. Kirkpatrick ruled the Commonwealth has no right to censor TV movies. The board then appealed to the I U. S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld Judge Kirkpatrick's decision. The board then went to jthe Supreme Court. The lower courts upheld that Congress already has authority over the television field through the FCC. Among stations which instituted the action were WCAU, WPTZ (TV) and WFIL in Philadelphia, WGAL Lancaster and WDTV (TV) Pittsburgh. a series of TV films called Disc Jockey TV Toons. The NARTB drive for video members, sparked by a TV board directive [Broadcasting • Telecasting, Feb 26], got under way in earnest last week. A joint letter explaining the membership situation was sent TV stations by Justin Miller, as NAB president; Mr. Poppele, and Eugene S. Thomas, chairman of the TV board. Basic format of the TV adjunct of the industry association was drawn up at a Jan. 19 meeting of video stations in Chicago [Broadcasting ° Telecasting, Jan. 22]. Mr. Brown, 34, was born in Columbus, Ohio. He was graduated from Princeton and later from Harvard Law School in 1941. Right after passing the bar examinations he entered the Navy, serving five years. At one time he was skipper of a patrol chaser in the Pacific. He emerged from the war with the rank of lieutenant commander. Joining Roberts & Mclnnis as a special partner, he was assigned RIGHT OF PRIVACY KSD-TV Telecast Raises Legal Question DRAMATIC balk before TV cameras at a Senate Crime Investigating Committee hearing in St. Louis Feb. 24 set off machinery for possible Senate contempt action against James J. Carroll, St. Louis "betting commissioner." It also brought up the question of whether requiring a witness to testify in front of video cameras constitutes an invasion of privacy. Recalcitrant Mr. Carroll had informed the committee that he would testify at 1 p.m., the time the two-hour telecast of the hearings by KSD-TV St. Louis had been scheduled to end. But when he appeared and saw the cameras trained on him, Mr. Carroll refused to answer committee questions. Mr. Carroll said he wouldn't answer any question as long as television was "on." He asserted television invaded his constitutional right of privacy and subjected him to ridicule and embarrassment. The verbal exchange with Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.), committee chairman, which resulted in an announcement by the Senator that he would recommend that the Senate cite Mr. Carroll for contempt, was followed on TV screens by a station-estimated one million viewers in the St. Louis area. Last spring, Mr. Carroll had appeared before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, chairmanned by Sen. Ernest W. McFarland (D-Ariz.), which held hearings on a Justice Dept. bill to ban interstate transmission of gambling information [Broadcasting ® Telecasting, May 1, 1950]. KSD-TV had extended its coverage of the hearing until its conclusion following an expression of great public interest in the proceedings, according to Program Director Harold Grams. The PostDispatch station said it cancelled 10 commercial programs to carry the hearings Feb. 23-24. Views on whether Mr. Carroll had a possible court case were varied, mainly because there apparently has been no legal test of television as a means of reporting a public hearing. Witnesses in advance of appearances before TV Turning his back on KSD-TV cameras and Sen. Kefauver is Mr. Carroll (wearing dark glasses). With Mr. Carroll is his attorney, Morris Shenker. or newsreel cameras covering a hearing have been known to have expressed their uneasiness and thereby been excused by the committee chairman. There are no rigid rules of conduct for Congressional hearings. Sen. Kefauver told Mr. Carroll that other witnesses had testified freely before cameras and that he would not make an exception in his case. The Senator later added that the hearing was public and that television was a medium of public information like the radio or the press. Some lawyers contend that telecasting of hearings would not invade privacy if the public is admitted to the hearing. Television merely extends the process of making hearings public, they say. In Los Angeles, where the committee was scheduled to open hearings, Downey Rice, associate counsel to the committee, said the investigating group definitely favors telecasting as a means of more fully informing the public about its work. Meanwhile, Richard A. R. Moore, ABC's West Coast television director and manager of its KECA-TV, said his station would be on hand with cameras. to handle Television Broadcasters Assn. affairs. The firm is counsel for DuMont as well. He has handled many cases prominent in the postwar growth of TV, including all frequency allocation hearings, minimum hour rules, color TV and the AT&T intercity video tariff investigation. It is understood the TV counsel will report directly to Wie NARTB TV director or manager, whatever his title, and to the TV board. This is part of the autonomy policy for TV within the new association. Mr. Brown is a son of the late Thad H. Brown, for many years an FCC Commissioner. He is married and has two children, Thad III, 8, and Bettina, 7. The Miller-Poppele-Thomas letter to TV stations noted that the TV operation in NARTB is scheduled to begin April 1. "If these activities are to be effective from the outset," it was explained, "much planning and preparation must be done in the meantime. To make these preparations successful, your TV board needs to have assurance at the earliest possible time that its operation is financially solvent. We trust, therefore, that you will return the enclosed membership form by return mail. Please attach a check for your first month's dues." Need for Unity Explaining the need for unity in the industry, the letter continued: "The Television Broadcasters. Assn. was represented at our Chicago meeting (Jan. 19) by a committee which Paul Raibourn, of Paramount (KTLA), headed. This group approved the NAB-TV proposal. Consequently, we now have an opportunity to develop a single, forceful trade association that can do the effective job which the television broadcasting industry needs." The letter recalled that threefourths of the TV stations were represented at the Jan 19 session. The TV board set up at that time adopted a dues formula based on the highest published one-time fiveminute rate, or half the quarterhour rate if the card has no fiveminute rate. A dues committee headed by George B. Storer, Fort Industry Co., is to report on the dues structure by April 1, 1952. Among projects the TV directors feel should be supported, within budget limitations, are these: Application of excess profits tax to recognize growth aspects of TV. Telecasting of sports. Opposition to 25% tax on TV sets. Winning of satisfactory per-program ASCAP license. AT&T rate case. Continuing study of TV stations costs. Hearing on allocations. Hearing on Section 3.661 (TV operating hours). Work with film sources to improve quality. Increase availability of films and provide price data. Standardize rate and contract forms. Sales aids. Collect and distribute set circulation figures. Improvement of TV set servicing. Telecasting • BROADCASTING March 5, 1951 • Page 55