Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

BROADCASTING TELECASTING January 30, 1956 Vol. 50, No. 5 SENATE BEGINS SECRET PLAN TO REALLOCATE NATION'S TV • Commerce Committee puts engineers to work on master plan • Meanwhile committee hears FCC explain uhf-vhf conundrums • Comr. Lee proposes toll tv might be solution to uhf survival THE Senate Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee has secretly begun a plan of action that may put it directly in the business of reallocating the nation's television system, B*T learned last week. The ad hoc committee of engineers organized in June 1955 by the Senate Commerce Committee was asked last week to devise and submit to the committee a national television allocation which would cure the disorders in the existing Sixth Report and Order under which the FCC has been operating since July, 1952. The 12-member engineering committee will be expanded for the big assignment it was given last week. Among the new members will be at least one economist. On Thursday, it was learned, the ad hoc committee chairman, Dr. Edward Bowles, consulting professor for industrial management of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and general consultant to the president of Raytheon Mfg. Co., sent present members of the committee a "confidential" wire announcing that he had agreed to a request by Sen. Warren G. Magnuson (D-Wash.) "to work out an exploratory competitive nationwide allocations plan." There was no comment from official sources, but on good authority it was learned that Sen. Magnuson and Dr. Bowles conferred in Washington last Wednesday. The senator was understood to have made no effort to conceal impatience with the FCC's response in the past two years to Congressional demands for reappraisal of the existing television allocation and to have emphasized that the Senate Commerce Committee had decided to undertake the job on its own. Sen. Magnuson was understood to have told Dr. Bowles that what he wanted from the ad hoc committee was a national tv plan that would be technically sound. Dr. Bowles reportedly suggested that in the formulation of such a plan, economic factors could not be entirely ignored, and it was he who suggested inclusion of an economist in the expanded membership of the ad hoc committee. The senator agreed to that, it was learned, but emphasized that the Commerce Committee itself wanted to determine the economics of any plan the ad hoc committee submitted. The procedure which was regarded as likely to ensue from the actions of last week was this: First the ad hoc committee, after reorganizing itself into a larger and broader body, will work out a national television facility distribution plan. That, obviously, will take some time — although some members of the ad hoc committee have privately done work on the problem already. Second, after receiving the plan from its ad hoc advisory group, the Commerce Committee will adopt, reject or modify it — again a project of more than overnight duration. Third, if it can agree to a final plan, the Committee will then present it to the FCC with a suggestion for execution. A "suggestion" from the powerful Commerce Committee carries considerable weight. Assuming the plan reaches that stage, it would be virtually tantamount to adoption as national policy, although conceivably the FCC would have to go through rulemaking procedure before putting it into effect. That the Senate considers itself the primary authority in distributing broadcast facilities has been made clear repeatedly. Only last week, at the opening of Commerce Committee hearings into the broad area of radio-tv allocations and operations (see below), Sen. Magnuson reasserted that the FCC is an arm of the Congress and that the FCC's authority to allocate and grant stations is delegated to it by the Congress. At week's end, there had not been time for the ambitious new proposal of Sen. Magnuson to go beyond the most preliminary stage. In his wire to present members of the ad hoc committee, Dr. Bowles said only that he had agreed to Sen. Magnuson's proposal to work out a plan which would "serve as a tool for testing various proposals and as a practical basis for arriving at recommendations to be made to the Senate committee" and that the senator had approved the expansion of scope and size of the ad hoc committee. He said that a more detailed memorandum would follow. Present members of the ad hoc committee, in addition to Dr. Bowles are William S. Duttera. NBC staff allocations engineer; Haraden Pratt, secretary of the Institute of Radio Engineers; C. M. Jansky, Jansky & Bailey, Washington; Dr. Allen B. DuMont, president, Allen B. DuMont Labs; Frank Marx, ABC engineering and general services vice president; Curtis Plummer, chief, FCC Broadcast Bureau; Ralph N. Harmon, engineering vice president, Westinghouse Broadcasting Co.; T. A. M. Craven, of Craven. Lohnes & Culver, Washington; Donald G. Fink, research director. Philco Corp., secretary; William S. Lodge, CBS engineering vice president, and John Teeter, executive director of the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund and parttime consultant to the Senate Commerce Committee. Stuart L. Bailey was appointed alternate to Mr. Jansky, and Robert Wakeman, DuMont, alternate to Dr. DuMont. Sen. Magnuson had hoped, for the time being, to keep the new development quiet. On Thursday he held a two-hour Commerce Committee hearing with the FCC without mentioning a word about his proposal to make an allocation plan within the Commerce Committee although he referred briefly to an expansion of the ad hoc committee. In a two-hour set-to in a packed hearing (Continued on page 44) WHILE FCC TESTIFIES, SENATE STARTS OWN TV REDISTRIBUTION STUDY ON THE STAND The FCC before the Senate Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee: Comrs. Bartley, Hyde, Mack, staff members Louis Stephens, Broadcast Bureau, and Warren Baker, general counsel; Chairman McConnaughey; Comrs. Webster, Lee, Doerfer. Broadcasting • Telecasting January 30, 1956 • Page 23