Education by Radio (1932)

twenty-four hours to what 80 percent of Amer¬ ican listeners have to endure. Then you’ll learn what is wrong with the radio industry. It isn’t hard times. It is broadcasters’ greed — which is worse, much worse — and like T. B. grows con¬ tinually worse, until patient radio public dies. That’s all the trouble. Simple, isn’t it? You know, it’s strange, but Dr. De Forest talks almost like a professor. He reminds me of the late Professor Vernon L. Parrington, who, in the last volume of his Main Currents in American Thought, said that science in this country had become“thedrab and slut of industrialism.” The truth about Mr. Lafount’s figures — Take, for example, this “volun¬ tary” surrender of the air which Commis¬ sioner Lafount is so cheerful about. What has actually happened is that the educa¬ tional stations have steadily been given less desirable frequencies; they have then been asked to divide their time with some commercial broadcaster; they have been obliged to meet some new regulation in¬ volving costly equipment — often, as the educators themselves admit, a regulation essentially right in itself, but applied with such suddenness as not to allow time for adjustment in the educational budget; finally, by the time they had got together the money for technical and program im¬ provements, they have been obliged to spend it on lawyers’ fees and on trips to Washington to defend their right to broadcast at all. The voice of education — While, for these and other reasons, the voice of inde¬ pendent education on the air has been fading, the voice of education sponsored by such companies as my host tonight and by the commercial broadcasting com¬ panies themselves in sustaining programs has been rapidly swelling in volume. Many of our most eminent educators have, tentatively at least, accepted this substitution. Some of them serve on the Advisory Council of the National Broad¬ casting Company; others are on the Na¬ tional Advisory Council on Radio in Edu¬ cation, which includes in its membership not only educators and publicists but also representatives of the two great broad¬ casting chains — National Broadcasting Company and Columbia Broadcasting System. This organization is financed jointly by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Carnegie Corporation. Its announced objectives are primarily fact-finding and fact-dissemination, and it has made and published valuable studies of both the technical and social problems of broad¬ casting. More recently it has sponsored educational broadcasts given over com¬ mercial stations, the first of the series being by Dr. Robert A. Millikan, who is president of this National Council. The commercial broadcasters greeted the for¬ mation of the National Council with en¬ thusiasm; they have, in fact, repeatedly declared their willingness to give the edu¬ cators all the free time on the air they can use, when and if the educators come prepared with educational programs which “do not bore too great a proportion of their audiences too much.” Whose audiences?!! — What do they mean — “their audiences”? Our na¬ tional quota of radio frequencies is public property under the law, and these broad¬ casters are licensed to use assigned fre¬ quencies, subject to revocation practically at will by the Federal Radio Commission. I assert that they are using this public property, not in the “public interest, con¬ venience, and necessity,” but in their own private commercial interest and that of the commercial advertisers whom they serve. For example, what public interest, convenience, or necessity is served by the disingenuous superlatives which are lav¬ ished night after night by my host, the Universal Food, Candy, Cigarette, and Gadget Corporation, on Cheeryoats, Wet Smack Bars, Old Mold Cigarettes, and Sweetie Washing Machines? If you really wanted to know the truth about these things you would demand that disinterested government experts from such departments as Public Health and the Bureau of Standards broadcast a genuine educational program which would, incidentally, debunk nine-tenths of the radio advertising now on the air. If, in addition, you want entertainment, including jazz, I suggest that you pay for it straight by means of a tax on receiving sets, as is done in England and in Europe, and will shortly be done in Canada if the recommendations of the government radio commission are followed. Don’t fool yourself — Do not imagine that you are not now paying for what you get and paying high. As taxpayers, you are paying directly the $444,179.94 an¬ nual budget of the Federal Radio Com¬ mission, most of which is spent in futile attempts to “regulate” the existing com¬ mercial chaos. As cigarette smokers, gum chewers, gadget users, and antiseptic garglers, you are paying indirectly the total budget of all the broadcasting sta¬ tions. which is estimated to be over $75,000,000 a year. This total is more, far more, than is paid by the radio listeners in all the countries of Europe combined. All you really get free is the efforts of philanthropic organizations like the Na¬ tional Committee and the National Coun¬ cil to inject some sort of civilized decency into the absurd situation which resulted from failure to make representative gov¬ ernment respresent true interests. Do you realize, ladies and gentlemen of the great radio audience, that your ears and minds are offered for sale to the highest bidder by profit-motivated cor¬ porations which have no title to what they sell and no title to the medium they use except squatters’ rights which, if con¬ tested, they will defend in the courts?. Do you imagine for a moment that education can permanently function as an append¬ age of toothpaste and cigarette-spon¬ sored jazz and vaudeville? Do you sup¬ pose that your views, your preferences, your rights, can make any headway at all against the economic determinism which obliges the commercial broadcaster to sell his most valuable time to advertisers, to permit the advertiser to cajole, bore, de¬ ceive, and insult the intelligence of his hearers to the limit? Do you imagine that even if educational institutions were able to pay for the facilities of commercial stations, instead of accepting their com¬ promised and qualified gifts of free air, educational programs would thereby ob¬ tain a complete right of way? Even so conservative an expert as Mr. H. V. Kaltenborn, editor of the Newspaper of the Air, does not think so. As he points out, commercial stations would insist that the programs must interest most of their listeners, lest competing stations win them away; they would also refuse to offend important advertisers by denying them the right to purchase popular peri¬ ods on particular days. Finally, altho Mr. Kaltenborn does not make this point, they would ultimately be obliged to cen¬ sor any educational broadcast which af¬ fected adversely the interests of their advertising clients. The wedge — Admittedly, ladies and gentlemen, the Fess Bill, even if passed, would not represent a complete or per¬ manently satisfactory solution of the problem of converting broadcasting to intelligent social uses. It would, however, drive a wide breach into the existing system of commercial exploitation, and prepare the ground for the recapture by the people of the free air which they have never legally surrendered. This article, which appeared in The Nation, March 9. 1932, Vol. 134, No. 3479, p280-2, is reprinted here by courteous permission of the publishers. r 54]