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CONGRESS TALKS RADIO, BUT DOES NOTHING ABOUT IT
The first session of the Seventysixth Congress heard a lot of talking about radio and the Federal Communj, cat ions Com¬ mission, but di.d nothing about it. All pending legislation, how¬ ever, including the McNinch-Wlieeler Bill to reduce the FCC to three members, goes over until the 1940 session.
Similarly, there were several preliminary moves toward a solution of the copyright problems, but no definite action was taken, and the Senate finally decided this week not to ratify the long pending International Copyright Convention before next year.
Congressional leaders on radio legislation expected that the fate of the Wheeler Bill and suggested amendments to the Communications Act will depend upon the success of the new FCC Chairman, James Lawrence Fly, and the recommenda.tions he may have to make to the Administration and Congress next session.
Relations between Chairman Frank R. McNinch and Com¬ mittees handling raddo legislation were never cordial, and the House Appropriations Committee was outright hostile toward him this year.
The immediate future of the FCC, it is believed, will depend upon the ability of young Fly to win over these Congress¬ ional leaders if he is appointed Chairman of the FCC as rumored.
As 1940 is an election year, however, any further move to reduce the membership of the Commission is likely to prove too hot to handle even by a Democratic majority.
The session opened with the eyes of Congress on the FCC because of the wide publicity given to the McNinch "purge". President Roosevelt’s message to the Capitol, urging that the old Commission be scrapped and a new agency be set up started a display of fireworks that occupied public attention for weeks.
Senator Wheeler, while the sponsor of the McNinch bill, was never enthusiastic over it, and as soon as the cries of "dictatorship" were raised, he quietly shelved the legislation.
He is not likely to revive it next year on his own initiative.
House critics of the FCC. principally Representatives Connery (D. ), and Wigglesworth (R. ), both of Massachusetts, introduced resolutions demanding an investigation of the FCC and the radio industry, but they were pigeon-holed by a Rules Committee obedient to the Administration,
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