Education by Radio (1933)

with amounts of power which were never to be put to practical use. In short, the Latin Americans concluded that the United States wanted to retain possession of its neighbors’ air but was unwilling to give neighboring countries an opportunity to reach American ears. How shall an allotment of North American broadcast channels be made? If divided equally among the 16 coun¬ tries and other large political units, there would be six chan¬ nels for each. If divided on the basis of area, the United States, including Alaska, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Canal Zone would have 40.1302 channels. If divided on the basis of population we would have 72.2848 channels. The United States now has 79 channels, plus 11 shared with Canada. Canada appears to be satisfied with the 18 channels she now uses. If the channels were divided on the basis of area she, with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, would receive 41.2961. If divided on the basis of population they would receive 6.1889. Basing her national system on service to listeners rather than service to advertisers, Canada does not use as many channels as might be required under our broadcasting practise. Chain announcement wrecks proposal — At the very time when the United States delegates were arguing for limit¬ ing each country to the use of its own official language, an American chain released an announcement of ambitious plans for broadcasting to all parts of North and South America in the official languages of all the countries on both continents. Some Latin Americans concluded that the American radio delegation, while officially representing the American govern¬ ment, actually represented only the point of view of a certain American commercial group, a point of view with which Latin America could not agree. In justice the Latin Americans cannot be criticized if they use channels, even the best ones, claimed by Canada and the United States. All channels clearly belong to any sovereign country within its own territory. Canada and the United States left no channels open for the other countries and it is not known that they make any serious effort to keep their waves at home. A false accusation — Two representatives of the broad¬ casting industry accused the representative of the National Committee of “dealing with the enemy” because, in perform¬ ing his routine duties, he mailed to the delegates who had not seen it before, certain information on the financial results of broadcasting in various countries which had been published in the United States in 1932. What these gentlemen partic¬ ularly objected to was information concerning the United States which one of them himself had prepared and published in an official document of the United States Senate, and testi¬ mony given at a public hearing by an official of his own organization. They said the data were out of date and inac¬ curate, but when they were invited to provide more recent or more accurate information for circulation to the same dele¬ gates, they said it was not available and that they would not give it to the delegates if they had it. This raises two funda¬ mental questions: [1] Should any country in North or Central America or the West Indies be looked upon as an enemy of the United States? [2] Do the Latin Americans have rights equal to those of the United States? There seem to be urgent reasons why commercial broad¬ casters in the United States ignore and try to suppress the fact that broadcasters in many countries with sound systems enjoy assured incomes and profits, guaranteed for periods of twenty to thirty years, while every American broadcaster con¬ tinually faces the possibility of being put out of business by some covetous American competitor or by a foreign station. In spite of failure to solve the extremely important prob¬ lems referred to, the conference made some valuable contribu¬ tions to North American radio. A reasonable share of credit for these accomplishments is due the American delegation. Broadcasting in the United States Harold A. Lafount Member of the Federal Radio Commission Under the Radio Act of 1927, as amended, the United States government retains control over all forms of radio transmissions and communications within this country and its possessions. That Act provided for the crea¬ tion of the Federal Radio Commission, which is charged with the responsibility of administering it. By international agreement frequencies are allocated to dif¬ ferent services — broadcast, ship, coastal, fixed, point-to-point, amateurs, aviation, and the like. The band between 550 and 1500 kilocycles is designated as the broadcasting band for use in the United States, and covers the frequencies indicated upon the dial of an average receivingset. It is the use of these frequencies that I shall particularly refer to here. We should bear in mind, however, the fact that the President, in an Executive Order, selected a few hundred frequencies for the use of the army, navy, and other departments of the govern¬ ment. All facilities not so allocated by the President come under the supervision of the Federal Radio Commission. That body licensed, as of June 30, 1932, 34,741 stations, 606 of which were broadcasting stations. Licenses issued for the operation of these stations are for different periods of time varying from ninety days to three years. In the case of broad¬ casting stations the term is six months. Under no circum¬ stances does the government make permanent grants. The Act requires that the operation of broadcasting sta¬ tions must be in the public interest, convenience, and necessity. Consequently, applications for renewal licenses are very care¬ fully scrutinized and are often designated for hearings before the Commission when it is not satisfied they are operating in the public interest. The Commission may also revoke any existing license for cause, providing, however, it does not act in an arbitrary ur capricious manner. The courts have sustained the Com mission’s decisions that licensees have no vested rights in the 147]