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136 The Big Audience
reminded that there is a little button on his radio by which he can change from station to station or (the unthinkable in broadcasting circles) satisfy a morbid appetite for silence. In more stately terms, when the argument is presented before the FCC, broadcasters note that the number and variety of radio programs offered make criticism of any single program pointless. As far back as 1928 the predecessor of the present FCC "gave short shrift to this argument" on the peculiar ground that "listeners . . . are powerless to prevent the ether waves carrying the unwelcome messages from entering the walls of their homes," which is physically true— the waves do penetrate walls; but the owner of a receiver has the power to keep them silent unless he tunes them in. The reasoning at this point was dubious; the social concept was valid. By implication, the Commission asserted the right of the citizen to inoffensive and to useful programs, saying that when a station is used for undesirable ends, "the listening public is deprived of the use of a station ... in the public interest." So, since its first decade, radio has been recognized as such a necessity of life that the listener is entitled to services of a specified quality. In recent years the same attitude of mind has been reflected in an FCC decision on giveaways as lotteries: one of the legal specifications of a lottery is that the participant gives a "consideration" in return for his chance to win. The FCC held that giving one's time, during the act of listening, was such a consideration. As Jack Gould said in the New York Times: ". . . the FCC would appear to have opened up the provocative line of thought that what radio stations sell is not their own time, but the time of their listeners." The value of that time was implied in the earlier decision: in return for listening, the individual can ask for programs that serve the public.1 The definition is broad enough to cover a multitude of comedians; the principle is strict enough to prevent comedians from polluting the air.
1If he looks as well as listens, he should be entitled to more satisfactions. Unlike listening to radio, looking at television is a full-time occupation.