Radio Broadcast (May 1928-Apr 1929)

338 RADIO BROADCAST OCTOBER, 1928 tions, the standard should be reasonably high. Radio, after all, is not for the benefit of the broadcasting station management or owner, but for the listener. To the average listener it represents a greater sacrifice to restrict the range of regional and national stations, a real program loss to immense areas, than to lose the chamber of commerce and the local glee club program, indifferently released by an inadequately financed and low-power local broadcasting station. The evidence brought before the Commission in behalf of the local stations was almost entirely drummed up by the station managements themselves and tended to produce an exaggerated conception of their local service, not always shared by the listeners. The large, loyal fallowings and the program merit of the high grade, high-power stations is axiomatic and has never required substantiation in the form of affidavits by politicians. Let us place the right of the listener to hear above that of the politician to shout. SPECIFIC EVIDENCE FOR THE SMALL STATION \ A OS T of the evidence brought before the * * Commission was in the form of impassioned speeches by station owners, supported by local politicians. Senator Curtis of Kansas, for instance, swore out an affidavit in behalf of wgl of New York City, a station notorious for consistently wretched quality of transmission and mediocrity of programs. The one occasion on which it really attracted attention to itself was when it proposed to broadcast the mutterings and shriekings of the inmates of an insane asylum. With such examples as these, the Commission undoubtedly discounted greatly any evidence put into the record by politicians whose objective was obviously to win local sentiment rather than to help broadcasting. Some stations were able to show specialized local service of considerable merit. It is for just such stations that we urge a limited number of local service channels. The fact that good local stations are supported by local advertising accounts is to their credit, in that it assures their economic independence and the fact that, in the opinion of advertisers at least, they have substantial audiences. In the most unfortunate plight were those stations charged with excessive frequency deviation. Some of these were able to show that they employed the utmost diligence in checking their frequencies against crystal oscillators purchased from companies of the highest repute. Because the crystals were inaccurately calibrated or because months were mysteriously required for their delivery to the station, these stations had no means whatever of maintaining themselves upon their assigned frequencies. Their difficulties were further complicated by the fact that, at the higher frequencies, stations are assigned with closer geographic spacing and the effects of deviation are more disastrous as the frequency increases. In so many instances were the sta tion's troubles laid at the doors of incompetent crystal grinding that alarmists were ready to charge that a conspiracy was on foot to destroy smaller stations by supplying them with inaccurately calibrated crystals. Without an accurately calibrated crystal, it is impossible to maintain a station on its frequency. Only by diligent observation and constant checking against an accurate crystal can a station maintain its correct position in the broadcasting spectrum at all. Occasional deviation is unavoidable; consistent deviation inexcusable. The present standard of 500 cycle maximum deviation is reasonable, but license revocation for a few violations is entirely too drastic a measure in the present state of the art. Suppliers of crystals, in a position to grind them to the accurate requirements of broadcasting, are few in number. Instead of accepting the responsibility attendant upon that position and giving the substantial aid they might to the conscientious broadcasters, these few suppliers allow months to pass between the acceptance and filling of an order and are not above blaming the Government's measures, rather than the defects of the crystal, when a crystal is found to be off frequency. Regulations for Television and Picture Transmission c ONSIDERING the rapid spread of picture broadcasting from coast to coast and the known intention of a great many additional broadcasting stations to undertake television and the broadcasting of radio picture THE MOST SOUTHERLY STATION Until Commander Byrd gets to work in the jar south, this station at Prince Olaf Harbor. South Georgia, will have the honor of being the most southerly of radio-telegraph stations. It employs a 500-watt Marconi telephone-tele graph transmitter, and it is used to control the movements of whalers in antarctic waters. This photograph was taken in the summer, when for a short time the snow partially disappears and a few plants may be seen. this fall, the Commission's announced intention to apply regulation to this new form of program is a matter of general interest to the broadcast listener and the management of broadcasting stations. There are two classes of image transmission to consider: (1) those systems involving the use of the conventional radio telephone broadcasting equipment, capable of radiation upon the standard broadcast channel without infringing upon neighboring channels; and (2) those using new methods of transmission and attempting the radiation of an excessive number of image impressions so that they radiate signals audible on neighboring channels. Before regular audiences are established for the latter type, which appears to include every attempt at television transmission so far made, regulatory orders should be issued which definitely limit all transmission in the broadcast band to a maximum channel width allowable without interference with neighboring channels. The Commission would be placed in a most embarrassing position if it found broadcasting disrupted by television signals, after thousands of listeners had equipped themselves with scanning discs and neon tubes in the attempt to receive these signals as television images. There should be no attempt to throttle the development of television, but traffic evils in the ether cannot be safely disregarded. The Commission is fully empowered by the Radio Act to "regulate the kind of apparatus used with respect to its external effects and the purity and sharpness of the emissions from each station and from the apparatus therein." It may therefore require that transmissions in the broadcast band be kept within definite 10-kilocycle limitations. Certain television transmissions in the broadcast band can now be heard twenty, thirty and even fifty kilocycles above and below the channel assigned to the station radiating them. As for picture transmissions, however, which do not involve any new character of signal with respect to "external effects and purity and sharpness of emissions," the Commission's jurisdiction is limited to their bearing upon public convenience and necessity. Picture transmissions made with the conventional radio telephone broadcasting stations are purely matters of program. They are for a special class of broadcast listener whose radio receiver has a picture-making attachment, but these listeners are no more a special class than are owners of farms for whom special farm programs are radiated, or foreign language groups which are often favored by special programs of no interest to any other listeners. The Commission is distinctly barred from regulating radio programs. Itisdoubtful whether the Commission may prescribe that a station shall not serve those of the radio audience desiring to receive pictures except within certain limited hours, any more than it may restrict the time devoted to philosophical lectures, jazz music