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EDITORIAL PAGE
DO WE NEED AN RIO?
VV HEN the convention of the Broadcasters' Promotion Assn. opens at the Waldorf Astoria on November 6, one of the major subjects on the agenda will be the challenging question "Does radio need an RIO?"
We're delighted that the BPA under the energetic leadership of John Hurlbut of the WFBM stations. Indianapolis, is bringing this whole meaty matter out into the open for public discussion.
Ever since the formation of the Television Information Office, countless radio men have been asking "Why shouldn't radio have the same sort of image-building agency? Haven't we got the same types of public relations problems — and maybe even more so?"
The answer is, at least, a partial yes. Radio does need a much stronger national voice than anything it has now.
The story of radio's importance, its dazzling achievements in public service, its overwhelming values in American community life, its role as the country's No. 1 purveyor of local news and information, is not being adequately told today.
The RAB is, by its charter, a sales arm of the industry, concerned solely with promoting advertising revenues.
The NAB, though it has instituted and carried through such fine projects as National Radio Month, has been limited in its radio public relations work by budget and policy considerations.
No one is doing the big-scale image-building job which radio deserves and we hope that the BPA members will reach this conclusion unanimously at their New York meeting.
The question of whether a new and separate RIO should be set up raises many practical problems however. The TIO gets its support from a core of 150 tv stations plus the three tv networks. Can an efficient RIO be set up with only minority station backing? Should it be attempted? Or wouldn't a more orderly and efficient method be to expand the radio public relations activities at the NAB? Shouldn't radio members of the NAB demand that this be done?
We trust that the BPA will thoroughly explore these questions, and we congratulate members on scheduling such a timely, important subject. ■
6S
U. S. RADIO/ September 1961