Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1960)

Change of course • The NAB has developed a new theory view, held by the NAB for years, that the FCC must keep of broadcast regulation which varies from its historic out of programming unless a law is violated. Douglas stand. Harold E. Fellows (1), NAB president, explained Anello (r), NAB chief counsel, reportedly had a strong it to the FCC last week. He called it the application of a hand in fashioning the new policy which Mr. Fellows pre "test of responsibility" and said it was a departure from the sented last week. sity is the clear responsibility of the licensee himself. "This responsibility of affirmatively determining the public interest community by community belongs to the thousands of station executives and personnel who daily serve their respective audiences. "We believe the Commission should enunciate, once and for all, that no central governmental body should attempt to assume this basic responsibility of the licensee even if it could constitutionally be given the authority. "If his [licensee's] actions are such that he demonstrates a continuing and reckless dishonesty or irresponsibility, then he shouldn't have a license anyway. "We believe, therefore, that the present requirement for a broadcaster to submit to the Commission a statistical breakdown of his programming activity is unrealistic and unnecessary. We believe it would be far more useful to the Commission and responsive to the public interest if the broadcaster, in applying for renewal, recited in narrative form the steps he had been taking in the preceding three years to determine the public interest, at the same time relating the changes that had taken place in his programming pattern and the local manifestations that impelled those changes. . . . "The Commission would not consider individual programs in granting or denying a license other than those that clearly violate such existing laws as those dealing with lotteries, profanity and the like. The Commission thus would be judging a licensee on the basis of his responsible service to a responsible portion of his community — for it is possible to serve the public interest by scheduling only classical selections during musical periods and for that matter, also for scheduling only popular music. "If, in its review of such narrative reports, the Commission should find no evidence of a bona fide effort on the licensee's part to respond 'to the wants of a responsible element of the community' or should find, for example, that deceptive advertisements were knowingly broadcast, then there would arise such question concerning the licensee's character that the Commission should investigate the matter further." Fellows under questioning by Ashbrook Bryant, FCC counsel Mr. Bryant cited this colloquy between Sen. Wallace White, chairman of Senate Commerce Committee, June 17, 1947, and Justin Miller, then president of the NAB: Chairman White: "I would like to have your view as to whether, in reaching a conclusion as to the public serv ice or the want of public service being rendered, the regulatory body has a right to look at the programs and has any control whatsoever over the programs they send out." Mr. Miller: "I think it has not." Chairman White: "So you would say that the quality of the programs has nothing to do with the question of whether a public service is being rendered or is not being rendered." Mr. Miller: "I do. Unless it goes so far as to constitute a vicinity or incitement to crime or something like that which is well within the limits which have been placed upon the freedom of speech generally." Then Mr. Bryant asked: "Now I gather that the position you are stating here today is somewhere midway between those two views. Or is it?" Mr. Fellows said: "I think I stand just as Judge Miller stood in that statement, sir. If you understand our position— perhaps I need to elaborate it. We do not say that the Commission has no right to investigate the programming content of any station. We start by saying that before the man is given a license or a renewal, that he should state what manner he has pursued in attempting to determine the public interest, convenience and necessity, the wants, the needs of that particular BROADCASTING, February 1, 1960 35