Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1958)

the key station in MICHIGAN'S* MIGHTY MIDDLE MARKET with a 24 hour schedule and 5000 LIVELY WATTS W has over twice the number of listeners than all other stations combined in (March-April, 1957— C. E. Hooper, Inc.) A K LANSING W contact Venard, Rintoul & McConnell, Inc. * 17 Central Michigan counties with $1,696,356,000 spendable income. OUR RESPECTS to William Clarence Koplovitz 4 WHEN you ask William C. Koplovitz, the chunky, new president of the Federal Communications Bar Assn., what he thinks of the FCC "mess" in Washington, he is likely to murmur an old French phrase, which means: "The more the change, the more it is the same." Bill Koplovitz ought to know. Twenty years ago when he came to the FCC, Congress was up in arms about communications and broadcasting in particular. Charges were being bandied about concerning political favoritism in grants of licenses, network domination, station sales and newspaper ownership. The Senate was considering the White resolution which called for a sweeping investigation of the FCC and of the broadcast industry. A companion bill was pending in the House. Sen. Burton K. Wheeler (D-Mont.), then chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, publicly coupled the FCC with such phrases as "rottenness and corruption," "a political football," "pressure from high places." The Commission itself was torn with dissension following the death in 1937 of FCC Chairman Anning S. Prall. President Roosevelt moved quickly to clean up the "mess." He drafted Frank R. McNinch, a North Carolina Democrat, from the chairmanship of the Federal Power Commission, to be the new head of the FCC. With the new chairman came William J. Dempsey, then general counsel of FPC. And, almost a year later, Mr. Koplovitz, who had been FPC acting general counsel, joined his colleagues at the FCC. The Dempsey-Koplovitz collaboration — which endures to the present day — was one of those teams which had its apotheosis in the early New Deal partnership of Thomas G. Corcoran and Benjamin V. Cohen. Messrs. Dempsey and Koplovitz first met while working for Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, in the depressionbattling Public Works Administration. They moved over together to the Federal Power Commission, and stayed together at the FCC until 1940 when they set up in private law practice for themselves. They scored an enviable record at the FPC: they won all 60 appeals from FPC decisions in the courts. They repeated this performance at the FCC: of the 38 appeals to the courts from FCC decisions, the FCC lost none. The capstone of their legal victories was the now famous Sanders Case — whereby the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the principle that broadcasting is private enterprise and stations cannot be protected from economic competition. William Clarence Koplovitz was born in St. Louis in 1909. He was raised by a widowed mother. He won a four-year scholarship to St. Louis' Washington U. from which he was graduated in 1929 with final honors and the gold key of Phi Beta Kappa. A year later he received his master's degree, his specialty being sociology and social work. But all the time he knew he wanted to be a lawyer (his master's thesis was "Legal Resources for Social Agencies"). He entered Harvard Law School in 1930, winning scholarships which led to a law degree, cum laude, in 1933. In a sense Mr. Koplovitz worked his way through school. Every summer he had a job in St. Louis, mainly in social work: He was with the St. Louis public library; the St. Louis Community Council commissioned him to do a survey of industrial plants. The Russell Sage Foundation engaged him to study unemployment relief methods. Black-haired, round-faced Mr. Koplovitz will relate with a smile that he was hired by one of St. Louis' top law firms, Thompson, Mitchell, Thompson & Young, after Harvard, but that he never worked there. Before he could start at his desk, he was given a leave of absence to go to Washington, which was then the magnet for all young lawyers — particularly Harvard lawyers. The problems of the FCC and of broadcasting today in the regulatory arena are not much different than 20 years ago, Mr. Koplovitz feels. There are still the same "problems": practices and procedures, the fair and equitable distribution of radio facilities — and Congressional investigations. But the Commission goes on doing a pretty good job, he adds. Mr. Koplovitz is a member of the American Bar Assn., the District Bar Assn. and the national executive committee of the American Jewish Committee. He has continued his social service interests with the Jewish Social Service Agency where he is chairman of its long range planning committee. He is a member of the Washington Hebrew Congregation. During World War II Mr. Koplovitz served as a lieutenant commander in the U. S. Coast Guard. He married Beatrice Rosenberg of Boston in 1941. They have two children, Susan, 16, and Bill Jr., 13. The Koplovitzes live on 3V2 acres in the Washington suburb of Bradley Hill Grove, Md. Bill Koplovitz had two hobbies when he was younger, golf and tennis. He still plays golf, but his second hobby is now more sedentary. It's bridge. WILS 4gg s^ Page 24 • March 3, 1958 Broadcasting