Broadcasting Telecasting (July - Sept 1952)

editorial *Jf The McFarland Law LAST WEDNESDAY the McFarland Bill became the McFarland Law. President Truman signed the measure to overhaul the FCC's way of doing business, just 24 hours before it would have expired by pocket veto. He signed it in his sick room at Walter Reed Hospital. This melodramatic ending couldn't be more fitting. The bill had been fought every inch of the way by FCC lawyers.. It had been sabotaged at every juncture, even to the extent of goading the Department of Justice to oppose it at the White House, when the FCC wouldn't go along. The McFarland Bill represents the first change in the substantive provisions of the organic radio law since its enactment in 1934. Senator McFarland, majority leader, had battled for six years to have it passed. This year he was successful in getting House approval, but the hard way. The bill isn't ideal legislation. It is the result of many compromises. But it can be lived with, not only by the licensees, but the licensors. It isn't a broadcasters' bill, but it. does give the broadcaster a better shake before the Commission. It doesn't solve the broadcasters' dilemma on political libel in this feverish election year, but it does give him a head start on remedial legislation at the next Congress, in an off-election year. We're pleased with this happy ending. Sen. McFarland fought a valiant, magnificent battle. He followed through tenaciously, when many another legislator, without the trying duties of the majority leader, would have figured it wasn't worth the candle. We hope he never losses the genuine interest in communications he has evidenced over these past six arduous years. Radio's Short Count THE KEMPER study of auto radio listening, reported elsewhere in this issue, is another illustration of how radio has habitually shortchanged itself in counting its audience all through its history. Perhaps if television had not come along, radio broadcasters would never have realized just how serious was their failure to measure the full dimensions of their medium. They might have gone right along underestimating their own importance and, consequently, undercharging for their product. What is worse, they might have gone along making their principal sales effort in competition with one another ("My Nielsen, or Hooper or Pulse is bigger than his is") rather than with rival media. It is probable that had radio sold against newspapers, magazines and other competitive media all these years, instead of selling against itself, the total radio advertising volume today would be enormously bigger. It is not hypersimplification to say that the under-the-table deal that characterizes today's selling by radio networks and, sad to say, by all too many stations would not have come about if, historically, radiomen had concentrated their energies on proving that radio was better than other media and not that one station was better than another or that one network was better than another. Whether program rating techniques led to radio's preoccupation with intramural sales competition or resulted from it is not im portant. The point is that ratings are chiefly useful in matching station against station or network against network. They are not worth anybody's time in stacking radio up against any other kind of advertising. What is needed now is a drastic reorientation of radio sales attitudes. Advertisers are matching radio against other kinds of advertising, even if they haven't got adequate research with which to do a sensible job of comparison. It's time radio matched itself against its rivals too, and armed itself with the sort of information it needs to make honest and complete comparisons. The research that Dr. Kemper has done in Louisville is along the lines that radio can find most useful. He and his sponsor, WAVE Louisville, are to be commended for doing something about a subject concerning which there has been much talk but too little action. it our respects to: Town Hall, U. S. A. THIS WEEK Chicago again becomes Town Hall, U. S. A., with almost every American a potential participant. This week in Chicago the Democratic National Convention will name the party's standard bearer. Town Hall, U. S. A. was created a fortnight ago. It came into being by broadcasting — television and radio broadcasting. It was born at the Republican National Convention which catapulted Gen. Eisenhower into the role of GOP Presidential nominee — after a candidacy on U. S. soil of only four months. Many a convention had been covered before by radio. The first was in 1924. But never before had a convention been covered nationally both by radio and television — where the participants could be seen as well as heard. The combination of broadcast operations also catapulted television and radio into the forefront of news media. The GOP coverage, in five days, revolutionized U. S. politics. This week will it be Russell, Kefauver, Stevenson or Harriman? Will Truman be drafted? The only safe wager is that whoever gets the nomination will get it with the acquiescence of the public, and not alone the delegates seated in the amphitheatre. Public reaction, goaded by what television saw and radio related, threw the sand in the gears of that Taft "steamroller." It was the affront to radio and television, excluded from GOP committee pre-convention sessions, that set off the wave of public indignation. Delegates were besieged with telegrams and longdistance calls from constituents. They wanted "fair play." The Eisenhower forces had taken to the air on the "fair play" issue. They reversed the Taft tide almost overnight. Radio and television did their most effective "editorial" job overnight too, without realizing it. They told the simple story of the exclusion of radio and television from the GOP proceedings. They reported the complaints to the candidates and to the committeemen. They reported also the opposition of newspapers to the blackout. They emerged with full recognition as full-fledged news media. And they emerged with something infinitely more, out of this happenstance, which radio heretofore hasn't been able to do alone, perhaps because it never really tried. The broadcast media have achieved a status equivalent to that of the press. They fought back. They exercised their editorial prerogative. More was accomplished for true freedom of radio at the GOP convention than in all the 32 years that had elapsed since the birth of the medium. The job done then will be underscored this week in Chicago when 2,000 specialists of the broadcasting profession present the second showing of Town Hall, USA. GEORGE SPENCER TURNER YOU walk into the office of George Spencer Turner, chief of the FCC's Field Engineering & Monitoring Bureau, and you walk into a room redolent of a bygone era in radio broadcasting — when wireless was new and mainly a matter of ship communications. On a platform desk inside Mr. Turner's door there is a four-foot scale model of the "Black Marias" which the radio service of the old Dept. of Commerce & Labor used as mobile monitors. On a shelf above his bookcase, Mr. Turner has replicas of early transmitter tubes and miniatures of early direction finders. On the wall of the office is a portrait of Mr. Turner's predecessor — W. D. Terrell, the first chief of the Radio Div. of the Commerce Dept. He doesn't exactly wear a handlebar mustache, but his high stiff collar connotes a World War I age. The man who puts in his working day amid such mementos has a right to have them there. He was a radio amateur in 1912 — at the age of 12. He taught wireless code and procedures to World War I sailors, was the radio engineer for the McCreary Radio Co.'s 9XAB in Kansas City after that, worked as a student engineer for the Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., and finally joined the Radio Div. of the Commerce Dept. in 1924. Native of Independence, Mo. — he went to the same high school as did President Truman and was taught by some of the same teachers — Mr. Turner as a youth was captured by the new marvel, wireless. It has been his vocation and avocation ever since. Mr. Turner rose high in amateur ranks, was Midwest Division manager of the American Radio Relay League in 1922. Among the calls he's had was W4COP — when he was inspector in charge of the Atlanta FCC field office. Right now he's W3AP. An advertisement for a civil service examination for radio inspector and a desire to get married combined to bring Mr. Turner into radio work as a vocation. The year was 1923. The girl was Mary Ann Hugo of Kansas City. At that time, the young Turner was working for the Bell Co. in Sedalia, Mo. He wanted to get a license to be wed, but he knew his colleagues would rib him unmercifully when they heard the news. So, when he saw the advertisement for the civil service examination to be given in War(Continued on page 62) Page 54 • July 21, 1952 BROADCASTING • Telecasting