Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1960)

nent grantee is ready to go on the air." Oral argument before the court has been set for July 7. In a tentative vote taken May 27 after FCC oral argument, the commission favored Capital Cities in staff instructions. An August 1959 initial decision by Hearing Examiner J.D. Bond to Capital Cities took note of the fact that five congressmen are minority stockholders in the company and made it "manifestly superior" in the area of civic participation. This decision was denounced as "political payola" by Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.) on the Senate floor (Broadcasting, June 27). WHO OWNS KRLA? FCC to seek answer in renewal hearing Because of past programming, contests and promotions and a question in the FCC's mind as to who actually owns the station, KRLA Pasadena, Calif., is going to have to face an FCC hearing on its application for license renewal. In announcing the hearing last week, the commission set the following issues, among others, to be resolved: whether program proposals made by the present licensee. Eleven Ten Broadcasting Corp., when it purchased the station were given in good faith; a September 1959 "find Perry Allen" contest and the manner it was conducted; whether program logs were altered to show religious programs that were not actually broadcast, and whether the actual owner is Donald Cooke, as listed in FCC records, or his brother Jack Cooke, a Canadian citizen. Donald R. Cooke, a station representative, purchased KRLA (then KXLA) last March for $900,000 from Loyal King (Broadcasting, March 30, 1959). When he took over operation of the station the following September. KRLA programmed for three days only a continual stream of announcements heralding the change. Regular programming began with "KRLA's Top 50 tunes". Rocket News, chiefly one sentence bulletins delivered in high-pitched staccato and separated by wailing whistles and time signals (At Deadline, Sept. 7). The station also held a "find Perry Allen" contest to focus the spotlight on a new disc jockey. On the Allen contest, the commission stated in a Sec. 309 (b) letter late last year that KRLA has admitted Mr. Allen actually was working for WKBW Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 4. 1959, the same day, the commission charged when KRLA stated over the air that he could be found in a Los Angeles restaurant (Broadcasting, Dec. 21, 1959). (Mr. Allen was "found" in Bufl'a'.o by representatives of KFWB Los Angeles. KRLA at first refused to pay the prize money to KFWB, later gave Robert Purcell, president of KFWB, a check for $10,000.) The FCC announcement also questioned whether the new KRLA owner ever intended to fulfill the programming promises made at the time the transfer application was filed with the commission. A final issue will be whether Jack Cooke, an alien, actually owns and controls the station in violation of FCC rules. Date for the hearing has not been set. FCC switches course on field strengths Signals were changed by the FCC for the third time last week in its proposed rulemaking to adopt new field strength tropospheric curve charts for vhf channels as part of an over-all plan to reduce mileage separations (Broadcasting, June 13, May 9). Covered in last week's change were the upper-band (chs. 7-13) vhf channels only. This action supersedes an earlier change in all 12 vhf channels, announced early in May, for the upper band only with curves for chs. 2-6 remaining the same in the lower band. growing , growing • • • all the time ! BROADCASTING, July 4, 1960 57