Heinl radio business letter (Jan-June 1946)

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Heinl Radio News Service 6/5/46 THURMAN ARNOLD BACKING FCC "BLUE BOOK" SWATS BROADCASTERS "The purpose of the great advertisers who support the radio is to sell goods. The Federal Communications Commission knows the importance of selling goods. But it also knows that power to determine what the American people should hear must not be delegated to men with a private financial axe to grind. " That was the gist of the argument advanced last Saturday night over the Columbia Broadcasting System by Thurman Arnold, former "trust busting" Assistant Attorney General, speaking on be¬ half of the American Civil Liberties Union. Judge Arnold was given this time by Columbia to answer the address by Carroll Reece, Chair¬ man of the Republican National Committee, who recently attacked the Federal Communications Commission’s report (now known as the "FCC Blue Book") setting forth rules and regulations for radio station licensees with regard to programming. "The broadcasters say that unless they have the power to determine the proportion of advertising programs they are being censored. If so, then every magazine is censored today", Mr. Arnold, who served for a time on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which handles radio appeals for the FCC, said. "As a condition to obtaining its second class mailing privilege the law requires that a magazine be principally devoted to public inform¬ ation, science, art or literature. The Post Office, not the magazine, lays down the proportion of advertising to non-advertising matter required to meet that condition. This is not censorship; it is sense. "Two weeks ago the Honorable Carroll Reece, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, threw the entire G. O.P. at the Commission's head. He called their action typical of the bureau¬ cratic state where the private citizen is pushed around with arro¬ gant contempt. He said: "'In the name of the 70 million listeners we resent the arbitrary actions of seven s elf-appointed guardians of the listening public. For the benefit of the individual as well as for the bene¬ fit of the nation American radio must be kept free. 1 "What kind of freedom did he mean? He meant that if A, B, and C are asking for a quasi-monopoly grant over the air, the Com¬ mission should not take into consideration which one of the three would spend a part of his great profit in making the forum of the air a place of public discussion and educational advancement. "What the broadcasters ask is that they be delegated the absolute power to decide the proportion of advertising and non¬ advertising programs over the radio. Can anything be less American than to put the power to decide a public question in the hands of men who have a financial interest in the way the decision goes? 5