Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

EDITORIALS Spark to Holocaust THE government battle against advertising is no longer in Washington. It has moved 35 miles away to Baltimore. There in the Monumental City a monumental city tax has been imposed on all paid advertising effective Jan. 1, designed to raise $2.7 million of a needed additional $17.5 million city budget. This is local taxation — so called. One of the two ordinances is for a 4% impost on all advertising purchased in all media. The other is a 2% tax on gross advertising receipts of newspapers, radio and television stations, billboards, car-cards and whatever else may be defined by the city fathers as advertising. It is local because it is inapplicable beyond city limits. Asiatic flu started locally somewhere too. Baltimore's cocky little mayor, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., got his rubber-stamp City Council to approve the levies despite serious questions of constitutionality on interference with the press (which also includes the broadcast media). He had cut the paid advertising tax from the original 1V2% to 4%. He also had made slurring remarks about the inordinate profits of newspapers (which have opposed him politically) and presumably drew in the broadcast media because he couldn't do it any other way. The cut in percentage doesn't remove the objection to this unjust, unprecedented, discriminatory, illegal and contagious tax. If it sticks, it will be picked up quickly by other politically-minded city governments who seek new revenue sources or who may have grudges against their local press and other media. All media, through their trade associations or individually, owe it to the public and to themselves to join in the court test of the D'Alesandro connivance. Local advertisers are not going to pay a 6% premium when they are already paying city income and perhaps sales taxes. National advertisers will try to cover such tax premium markets by invading from without — through networks, rather than spot, in magazines instead of newspapers. The little spark ignited by Mayor D'Alesandro can become a holocaust that might destroy locally placed and billed advertising in all media unless it is stamped out promptly. Ann Arbor Anomaly AN INTERESTING way of meeting the shortage of qualified science and math teachers has come from the University of Michigan campus at Ann Arbor. Garnet R. Garrison, the university's director of television, proposes the government buy top commercial tv time for educational programs. Unfortunately Mr. Garrison let his zeal run away with his political reasoning processes when he suggested the government should exercise the right of eminent domain to reach mass audiences through regular tv channels. In other words, he wants the government to appropriate private property for public use, with compensation for the value of choice tv hours. It's good to know, Mr. Garrison feels, that if tv can motivate a desire to buy consumer goods it also can help solve a concededly critical educational problem. But it's utterly baffling to hear him propose a dictatorial type of confiscation that would have aroused only tolerant smiles had it come from the effervescent mind of one of his underclassmen. Legion of Tolerance AS DIRECTED by the Vatican, the U. S. Catholic hierarchy has begun planning an organization to judge radio and television as the Legion of Decency has judged motion pictures. The name and scope of the Episcopal Committee on Motion Pictures have been enlarged. It is now the Episcopal Committee for Motion Pictures, Radio and Television, and it has embarked on a year's study to develop means of evaluating radio and tv programs. Meanwhile the committee, composed of five bishops, will continue to make policy for the Legion of Decency. The extension of active Catholic scrutiny into the fields of radio and tv is the consequence of an encyclical issued last August by Pope Pius XII. The encyclical was, on the whole, a temperate document which carefully avoided suggestions that the Catholic hierarchy should attempt censorship outside the church. We have no doubt that the U. S. bishops will be sincere in their efforts to follow the Vatican mandate. But we cannot help wondering, as we wondered when the enPage 122 • November 25, 1957 Drawn for BROADCASTING by Shervrin L. Tobias "Yes, I like it, too, but will Ed Murrow like it?" cyclical was published, whether a program of self-discipline so massive as to include the entire Catholic laity and priesthood can be put into effect without creating serious censorship outside the Catholic community. The Legion of Decency classifies movies as "unobjectionable" or "objectionable." These classifications mean, of course, that the movie in question is either objectionable or unobjectionable to Catholics. It is unnecessary to point out that some things that are objectionable to Catholics are unobjectionable to non-Catholics. The moment the radio and television Legion of Decency, or whatever it comes to be called, allows its influence to extend outside its own church, the body will itself deserve a rating of "objectionable." Our Cup Runneth Over OUR MAIL this week accuses us of corrupting maidens, breaking homes, orphaning children, associating with the devil and, worst of all, drinking. Baptist ministers throughout the South are praying for our salvation — but without much hope. The crimes with which we have been charged and the stern fates to which we have been committed may be studied in greater detail in our Open Mike department of this issue. The letters there are a mere sampling of more than 150 we had received when this editorial was written. Our principal crime, of course, was in writing an editorial suggesting that broadcasters ought to reappraise their ban against liquor advertising. This editorial, from our Oct. 28 issue, was reprinted (without our permission despite copyright restrictions) and circulated to southern Baptists by Paul M. Stevens, director of the Radio & Television Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, with the request that they write the editor. We have no idea what action is in store for us from Mr. Stevens and his associates when they get to work on our second editorial which ran last week or on this third one. Surely, men of the cloth will not resort to bodily assault, though that is the only recourse which they have not yet taken. The reaction we have had so far to our proposal that liquor advertising be admitted to the airways confirms what we have believed all along — that prohibitionists make noise all out of proportion to their numbers. For lack of other noise, theirs can sound impressive. We are firmly convinced that if the liquor question were to be resolved by ballots instead of shouting there would be no change whatever in the nation's liquor laws. The repeal of the 1 8th Amendment made liquor legal nationally. But some states have historically remained dry, and individual communities within still other states have retained various forms of prohibition. In such places liquor advertising obviously would not be appropriate. Outside those areas, however, liquor is not only legal; it is socially acceptable. Indeed it is a standard part of the social scene. Where liquor is legal we doubt that broadcasters would encounter anything but an increase in income if they accepted liquor advertising under proper controls. Broadcasting