Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1957)

Watch the Fords Go Buy THE Ford contract with CBS Radio amounting to approximately $5.5 million gross billing could not have been better timed. It was signed during National Radio Week. Ford's buy is not a tinseled affair. It is for a firm 52 weeks starting next fall with an option for another 13 weeks that could carry the contract through 1958 — a major advertiser's insurance policy for the future. In radio's history, few sales to a major advertiser have been so fully researched and analyzed. J. Walter Thompson Co. worked for months in presenting network radio's story to the auto maker, in terms of audience, homes, listenership, sets (including the importantto-Ford auto radios), costs per thousands and media comparisons. For the agency's client this was an awakening, and for the agency itself it was back to school for a re-education in radio basics. For some time radio's salesmen have been deploring the fact that the vast numbers of radio-equipped automobiles are often forgotten. It doesn't take long for the Ford people, though, to incorporate this plus into their thinking. Among radio's many advantages as an advertising medium is its ability to sell, entertain and inform on a mass basis. Ford means to do all three, having purchased a. radio package that is made up of entertainment, news and personality selling. And with it, the advertiser will retain identity with the programming. This radio tune-up of Ford's advertising ought to spark similar interest elsewhere among big advertisers. To add to this renewed radio network activity by bellwether national advertisers are the bright present and promising future of spot and local business. The road ahead is clear and it appears that radio sponsors can measure some very significant mileage by the time National Radio Week comes around again next spring. Regulation and Its Future A SPECIAL Congressional investigating committee with a mission ii and money is in spring training. Its assignment is depicted in its name: "The Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight." It has an initial budget of $250,000. This committee is a pet project of House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas. Speaker Rayburn is jealous of the prerogatives of Congress. He has voted on the creation of nearly all of the independent regulatory agencies. He knows they are arms of the legislative and not the executive branch of government. He wants the investigation to develop whether these agencies are now acting as Congress intended when they were given life, or whether the bureaucrats are running them in their own way, ignoring the Congressional intent, or are subservient to the White House and the executive branch. And that's where the FCC comes in. The inquiry is not directed against the FCC alone. It will cover all of the independent regulatory agencies, like the FTC, CAB, SEC and ICC. But, because of the importance of the FCC's work, major attention focuses upon it. The chairman of the committee is Rep. Morgan M. Moulder (D-Mo.). a member of the House Commerce Committee, which handles legislation dealing with most of the independent regulatory agencies. The committee now is assembling its staff. It may be weeks or months before it gets to the public hearing stage. Meanwhile it will have access to the reports of the half-dozen inquiries, studies, inquisitions and whatnot, now being conducted by House and Senate committees and by the FCC itself, to help it formulate its own agenda for its FCC inquiry. With the attitude of Congress what it is, and with Speaker Rayburn's formidable support, it is likely this committee can get all the money it needs. Congressional interest in the functioning of the independent agencies usually flares when there is split government — when the executive branch is of one party and the legislative is controlled by the other. That's the situation now. Back in 1934, when President Roosevelt appointed Lame Duck New York Democratic Congressman Anning S. Prall to the then new FCC, he told him this was the "second most important job in Washington." Sam Rayburn was then the chairman of the House Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee, which had drafted the Communications Act of 1934 — the basic statute today. Over the years, the partisan charge repeatedly has been made Page 152 • May 13, 1957 Drawn for BROADCASTING • TELECASTING by Sid Hil "Everything is fine at all our stations . . . although I did find a copy of Newsweek in one of the reception rooms." that the President, who has the appointive power, has "stacked" the regulatory boards, thus paving the way for partisan influence. The "opposition" in Congress has consistently contended that these agencies were created as bi-partisan entities. It's fool-hardy to contend, either during Democratic administration or Republican (and Mr. Eisenhower is the first GOP president since the Communications Act became law in 1934), that the letter and spirit of that law have been complied with. Regulatory decisions have been influenced in the past and will be in the future until a fool-proof system is found. And it may be that the system and the laws are all right, but that the agencies are no stronger than the men who run them. Infallible Argument for Access RADIO and television coverage of the murder trial of lohn Gilbert Graham, one of the most widely publicized of the decade, provides an answer to the American Bar Assn.'s Canon 35 that will tax the ingenuity of those who contend radio and tv have no right of access to court proceedings. A careful reading of the post-trial comments by principals in the proceeding will leave little room to question the obsolescence of Canon 35 and its ban against broadcasting of court proceedings. The canon was adopted long before television joined the ranks of mass media. Its existence 10 years after tv's commercial debut is testimony to the reluctance of the legal profession to join the march of civilization. The district attorney in the Graham case, conceding the cameras had no observable effect on conduct of the trial, added this significant comment (see transcript of Graham trial comments, page 136): "The people seemed to think that they were entitled to this sort of coverage." The judge, defense attorney, defendant's widow, jury foreman and others agreed that radio and tv had covered the trial without jeopardizing justice or the decorum of the court. Coming after the Colorado Supreme Court had ruled in favor of modifying Canon 35 and after the defendant in the "greatest known instance of mass murder" had been tried within range of camera and microphone, the documentary evidence of electronic journalism's legal role provides the perfect argument for broadcasters. NARTB is wisely preparing a 15-minute film summarizing the Denver incident. This will be available for broadcasting and for showing to legal and civic groups. The arguments on behalf of electronic reporting, as offered by parties to the Graham trial, should be publicized in every community. State broadcaster associations are joining NARTB in plan j ning wide publicizing of the film and the written transcript. No member of the legal profession who is ignorant of the lessons j learned in the Graham trial is qualified to take a stand on behalf of Canon 35 or to oppose electronic reporting in the courtroom. Broadcasting • Telecasting