Broadcasting (Apr - June 1960)

EDITORIALS Let’s give toll a test AS REPORTED elsewhere in this issue, Zenith and i RKO General have joined their substantial forces to give on-the-air subscription television its first significant test. The conditions proposed in the Zenith-RKO plan appear to correspond with those prescribed by the FCC a year ago. It is our view that official approval ought to be given after appropriate analysis. We say this knowing it will seem a departure from a policy we have vigorously advocated over many years. Historically this publication has argued against on-the-air subscription television. If our position has changed, as it has to the degree that we now think a carefully controlled test is admissible, it is because times have changed. The conditions prevailing now differ considerably from those that prevailed during and before the great debates over subscription television in 1957-58. Our opposition to subscription television was based mainly on our belief that its introduction would disrupt if not destroy the free system that was then expanding at a rate that promised to deliver an unprecedented volume and quality of entertainment and information to the American public. That promise has been more than fulfilled, but the expansion of station facilities has now been arrested. In the past year there has been a net gain of only five operating commercial stations. The net gain in the next year is likely to be less. Barring sudden breakthroughs in uhf technology, or sudden acquisition of more vhf space from other spectrum users, or, with consequent disaster to the whole system, a wholesale degradation of present vhf standards to wedge more stations into the vhf range, the U.S. commercial television system appears to be fixed at approximately the number of stations now on the air. There is hope, of course, that in the long range it may be possible to find ways to use more of the facilities that are now awaiting occupancy by commercial stations. But there are enough doubts about that development and its date to justify the kind of controlled exploration of subscription television that Zenith and RKO are proposing. There will be the opportunity to appraise policy after the Hartford test. The existing system is strong enough now to survive new competition for audience and, if necessary, to adapt to changing times. It wasn’t strong enough two years, three years, ago. Whatever the outcome of the Hartford test, the American public is guaranteed at least its present quantity and equality of television programming, which is to say the most and the best television in the world. Spring training BOTH Congress and the FCC are putting on a dazzling exhibition of legislative and regulatory pyrotechnics. It may be sheer coincidence that these come on the eve of the NAB convention in Chicago this week. Chairman Oren Harris’ Oversight Committee has moved from the Mack sensation, the Goldfine-Sherman Adams case, quiz-rigging and payola (with minor excursions into other non-broadcast areas) into ratings. In so doing it is stealing a march on Sen. A.S. Mike Monroney (D. Okla), who several years ago staked off this area as his private investigatory preserve. The FCC has capped a series of secondary crack-downs with its massive March 16 attack on purported derelictions in sponsor identification. It descended upon 5,000 unsuspecting broadcasters with an interpretation of Section 317 of the law that threw them into a tizzy. It attempted to ameloriate the injury the other day by giving broadcasters, belatedly, a chance to state their case — a slight oversight on the commission’s part in its original action. It’s too bad the FCC didn’t re-open the matter for rule-making. We haven’t made a recent count, but a sniff in the direction of Capitol Hill yields the odor of a dozen new bills to bind and gag broadcasters in different ways. Broadcasters have no quarrel with those bills to outlaw quiz-rigging or payola. These practices already are nonexistent. They should be made criminal offenses where they involve corruption. But those omnibus bills to all but rewrite the existing law would impose upon stations sanctions and restrictions unheard of in the regulation of private enterprise outside the common-carrier field. This bombardment will continue, we imagine, as long as the Oversight Committee’s funds hold out, or until the committee can find better pay-dirt in other areas of government activity. The only hope is that this election year will bring an early adjournment of Congress. The investigating committees, of course, can meet during the recess, but most members have a little fence-mending to do back home. So more grist is supplied to the overloaded agenda in Chicago this week. Image building THE broadcasters’ $10 million fund-raising campaign for Radio Free Europe, described elsewhere in this issue, is correctly called unprecedented. Never before have all the skills and talents of broadcasting been enlisted for a special RFE drive above and beyond the coordinated efforts of all media. In the two-week on-the-air campaign which starts April 24, the responsibility rests upon television and radio alone. This is more than a responsibility; it is an opportunity which itself is unprecedented. For the first time since the quiz-rigging investigation broke last fall, bruised and battered broadcasters have a chance to show, in a single common enterprise, the immense abilities of radio and television to work in the public interest. It is their best as well as first opportunity to answer, in one voice, the charge that they are insensitive to public service needs. There is no need to expand here on the importance of Radio Free Europe. Perhaps more than any other single group, broadcasters know its value. We have no doubt — indeed, there is a long history of performance in other RFE and countless similar campaigns to prove — that they would get behind this fund-raising venture even if it were not so clearly to their own benefit to do so. Drawn for BROADCASTING by Sid Hix “I had a horrible dream last night ... I dreamt all those private eyes on tv were investigating us!” 160 BROADCASTING, April 4, 1960