Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1955)

Record Details:

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Boyd Evans Star of Alabama Farmers' Journal WAPI 5:45 to 6 a.m. ABabama Farmers' Time WAFM 12 to 12:15 (fed Statewide Network) HOOH EDITION WABT 12:18 to 12:23 — all Monday through Friday These programs of Farm Service (not "Farm Entertainment") are heard and heeded by substantial farmers all over Alabama. Boyd is well fitted for this work. He attends about 2 farm meetings a week and speaks to more than 100,000 farmers every year. Stars Sell on Alabama's greatest radio station Birmingham Represented by John Blair & Co. Southeast, Harry Cummings greatest TV station BT Birmingham Represented by B LAIR-TV GOVERNMENT facility. It also indicated that if ch. 10 were permitted to be moved into Vail Mills, it (WMGT) would apply for it. The appeal also said: "The Report and Order, in allocating ch. 10 to Vail Mills, aggravates the present intermixture problem in the Pittsfield-Capital [Albany] area at a time when the Commission has ordered a general rule-making proceeding professedly designed to study deintermixture on a nationwide basis and if need be to shift existing vhf operations to uhf. Unless the Report and Order is construed as only 'tentatively' allocating ch. 10 to Vail Mills, the Commission would stand accused of prejudging the general rule-making proceeding now in progress and the weight it intends to give to city-by-city allocation data. . . ." The Broadcast Bureau's oppositions to the uhf petitions to intervene in pending vhf cases claimed the filings were "much too late" and the intervention if granted would be "fruitless." The uhf petitions [B«T, Nov. 28] not only asked for intervention, but also asked that final decisions in the pending vhf hearing cases be stayed. The Broadcast Bureau charged that the petitioners were not interested in the outcome of the hearings, but only "in preventing a grant to either applicant." The Bureau chided the petitioners for suggesting that the Commission might be influenced in considering deintermixture between a situation where there was no vhf operating and where there was one in existence. "This argument," the Bureau said, "implies that the Commission will be less than diligent in considering the overall uhf-vhf problem in pursuing the true public interest . . . (furthermore) the Commission in adopting its Notice of Proposed Rule-Making made it clear that deintermixture is only one of a number of possible solutions. . . ." In situations where oral argument has not yet been held, the Bureau said that a stay would result in jeopardizing the losing applicant's right of appeal. It would also be unfair to the winner, the Bureau said. TV MUST RAISE PUBLIC TASTE— McCON N AUGH EY It's not enough just to serve public taste, FCC chairman says in addressing Sylvania Awards dinner. He blasts 'bar-room' material and overcommercialism. AMERICAN telecasters must judge the "good taste" of what goes out over the air from their stations, FCC Chairman George C. McConnaughey said last week. ". . . With unforgivable frequency the American living room is being fed material more appropriately reserved for the bar-room or midway," the FCC chairman told an audience assembled at the Sylvania Television Awards dinner in New York (see separate story on page 109). Mr. McConnaughey, who also referred to bait-and-switch advertising as offensive, told broadcasters that "the job is not only to serve the public taste, but to raise it a little." "The best guidance and discipline is selfguidance and self-discipline," Mr. McConnaughey said. He declared that he hoped the industry will solve its own program problems and maintain high standards. "Do not for a minute relax vigilance," he added. "The heritage is so vital to our continued existence as a free people that there ought to id be screams any time your government gets close to the prize." The Commission is forbidden to exercist censorship over program content, Mr. McCon naughey recalled. ". . . Not one of us, I am sure, would trus any other commissioner or combination o: commissioners, past, current or future with tht power to control what comes out of a radio o television receiver," Mr. McConnaughey said "This has got to be in the hands of the pub lie . . ." Lengthy commercials also came in for ad' monishment by Mr. McConnaughey. "I not believe that the long commercial carrie greater selling impact than the short, punch; message," the FCC chairman said. "Nor do believe that piling up commercials is a signifi cant accomplishment. Listeners who have hean one program and are waiting for another havi to expect a plug to intervene. But when the; have one or more announcements, they have ; reasonable right to expect a program to inter vene." Expressing his "bullish" attitude toward colo tv, Mr. McConnaughey said: "I am a color enthusiast. ... It makes a picjl ture look sharper and more life-like and will open up to television whole new areas in pro] gramming and in attracting business." Color production should really get going nex,f j~ year, Mr. McConnaughey declared, "and ushe in an era where the color set will be as common place in the home as black-and-white is now.1 . 160 i i I: BASEBALL MEN TOLD PAY TV NOT AT HAND PAY TV is not around the corner. That is wha FCC Chairman George C. McConnaughey — liaii college varsity pitcher (Denison U., 1920)— k told the National Assn. of Professional Base m ball Leagues last week in Columbus, Ohio. "Whatever course pay-as-you-see or free tele!5 vision might take," Mr. McConnaughey tolc s the baseball delegates, "there is at least i strong possibility, if not probability, that it wilifw not be included in tomorrow's headlines." After reviewing the unprecedented volume -e of comments and correspondence on subscription tv received by the FCC (25,000 fillinfp nearly 70 reference volumes), he referred t(' "a great deal of opinion" that the matter o' pay tv cannot be authorized by the Commis sion without legislation by Congress. "If than develops," he added, "I am sure you knov the added difficulties that would be presentee to any speedy action." The FCC chairman spoke out on the "con fusion and misinformation" regarding thi] ability of a tv station to broadcast free anc fee programs on the same channel. "At th< present stage of the television art," he said "this simply is not possible. Any given channe or television station at any particular time must be utilized wholly either for toll tv oi free tv programs." The convention also heard minor league President George M. Trautman call for addi tional curbs to be placed on the broadcasting and telecasting of major league games intc minor league territory. He told big league baseball "to quit broad casting us to death or some day you may be out of business yourselves." "I have a memory of a basic economic principle I learned in college," Mr. Trautmar said. "It is simply that you can't put a superioi product out for free in competition with an Page 82 • December 5, 1955 Broadcasting • Telecasting