"Radio Channels for College Stations" Education by Radio (July 30, 1931)

EDUCATION BY RADIO VOLUME 1, NUMBER 23, JULY 30, 1931 NEXT ISSUE AUGUST 13, 1931 Radio Channels for College Stations Armstrong Perry T he act by which the Congress of the United States created the Fed¬ eral Radio Commission ignored the fact that public education is a function of the individual states and not of the federal government. A Senator who was concerned with drafting and passing the law has stated that he inserted a clause which was in¬ tended to protect broadcasting stations operated by educational institutions es¬ tablished or chartered by the states, but that this clause was taken out of the bill at the suggestion of a Congressman who argued that, of course, the Federal Radio Commission could be trusted to protect such stations. The Commission, however, soon began to cut down the privileges of some of the college stations, and educators then began to realize that Congress had given the Federal Radio Commission more control over the edu¬ cational functions of the states than ever before had been placed in the hands of a federal agency. The Federal Radio Commission did not protect the educational stations as the '"Congressmen believed it would. It accepted the fact that radio broadcast¬ ing was classified in the business world as an amusement enterprise, supported by the sale of advertising. Broadcasting as it existed in America was a business, more nearly related to the vaudeville theater and the movies than to the pub¬ lic school, the college, and the university. From the point of view of the radio in¬ dustry, as of the theatrical profession, the public was to be exploited rather than educated. Both assumed that amusement was the major interest of the people of the United States. Both believed that only a small minority of the radio listeners was interested in edu¬ cation. The commercial broadcaster’s aim was to reach everybody, including important minorities, so material of an educational nature was broadcast. How¬ ever, most of the hours when the largest audiences could be reached were devoted to amusement. Inasmuch as collecting fees from American listeners appeared to the broadcasters to be more difficult and less profitable than selling time to adver¬ tisers, in spite of the experience in other An address before the Second Annual Institute for Education by Radio, Columbus, Ohio, June 9. 1931. Mr. Armstrong Perry is director of the Service Bureau of the National Committee on Education by Radio, and is associated with the Payne Fund. countries, advertising became the means of producing income. The members of the Federal Radio Commission were not educators. Commercial pressure—The com¬ mercial broadcasters, being more ag¬ gressive than the educators, surrounded the Commission with such influences and brought such pressure to bear, that it was natural, perhaps, that the Commission should overlook the fact that educat ion and business have radically different ob¬ jectives, and that it should agree with the commercial broadcasters in believing that public education, so far as radio was concerned, should be in the control of men and corporations who were inter¬ ested mainly in making profits. The control of radio is the basic prob¬ lem. The whole radio industry and some educators have tried to keep this prob¬ lem in the background until all broad¬ casting channels should have passed into the control of business corporations. It was kept in the background until 94.5 percent of the channels had been given by the Federal Radio Commission to stations devoted to amusement and ad¬ vertising, and until only about fifty of our more than six hundred American broadcasting stations remained free from cominercial control and censorship. Commercial broadcasters have offered education magnificent gifts on one hand, and on the other hand have made a de¬ termined effort to take away from the public schools, colleges, and universities the fundamental right, left to them by the Constitution of the United States, of using any method of education and keeping education free from any obliga¬ tion to promote the interests of particu¬ lar commercial groups. They have of¬ fered more time on the air than the educators have accepted. They have spent more money on educational radio programs than the educators have, and have made these programs more widely available than any that have originated in the halls of learning. They have given outstanding educators high positions, at¬ tractive titles, and much publicity for serving, or appearing to serve, in an ad¬ visory capacity to commercial compa¬ nies. But they have fought every at¬ tempt to reserve any radio channels and keep them under control of officials elected by tlj& citizens of the states to [91] administer public schools, colleges, and universities. They have said, by official astion of their leading trade organiza¬ tions, that the demand of educators for reservation of radio channels is based on a totally false conception of the function of broadcasting stations, and have re¬ vealed that the industry maintains state and national organizations for the pur¬ pose of controling legislation. These methods resemble closely those of other industries based on the use of public property. It is natural that they should, for some of the largest public utility corporations are associated with the dominant radio group, and when the first broadcasting chain was organized its first president was a man who had been serving as the public relations director of a public utilities corporation. He had revealed with the utmost frank¬ ness his plan for subsidizing educators so that they might shape education to the advantage of public utilities corpora¬ tions. Educators organize—Few educators have objected to granting the use of part of the radio channels to commercial con¬ cerns, to use for their own profit. It was not until the trend toward monopoly had reduced the uncensored channels to a dis¬ appearing remnant that educators organ¬ ized to save the birthright of the public schools and institutions of higher learn¬ ing. Then they studied the history of the dealings of the Federal Radio Commis¬ sion with the educational stations. Here are some of the facts that were considered: The Radio Committee of the Associa¬ tion of Land Grant Colleges and Uni¬ versities reported: The primary purpose of the Radio Commit¬ tee is to protect the interest of the Land Grant Institutions on the air so far as practicable. It has been the hope of several members of the Committee that they could secure from the Federal Radio Commission definite rulings which would ensure, at least to every state and particularly to the Land Grant Institution thereof, a definite wavelength or period, which could be used by the institutions for educa¬ tional broadcasting. This had not yet been ac¬ complished at the end of August, 1929. It has not been accomplished yet. The action of the Commission, in compelling educational stations to share channels and time with commercial stations, has