Variety radio directory (1937)

FEDERAL RADIO REGULATION— Continued the case where a newspaper publisher owns a number of stations but in different cities. A third is where the newspaper-owned station is only one of a number of competing stations in the city, the others owned either by competing newspaper publishers or by other interests. No one rule, whether based on competition or on some other principle, will cover these different situations. There is a school of thought which believes that since both newspapers and broadcast stations are competing agencies of mass communication to the public as well as competitors for the advertiser's dollar, they should be kept in separate hands. Another school of thought answers by saying that newspaper publishers are unusually well equipped to render good broadcast service, and that they are largely responsible for preserving such independence and competition as now exist in broadcasting. In any event, some of the thoughts of those that oppose newspaper ownership have found expression in a minority opinion by one member of the Commission, in speeches and statements by prominent members of Congress, and in a bill introduced in Congress during the current session, which would require a complete divorce of newspaper and broadcast station ownership. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF STATIONS. The Act requires that in considering applications "the Commission shall make such distribution of licenses, frequencies, hours of operation, and of power among the several States and communities as to provide a fair, efficient and equitable distribution of radio service to each of the same." Even if this direction had not been in the statute, it is believed that the same principle would have been followed sooner or later under the standard of public interest, convenience or necessity. A fair distribution of stations over the country, as between the larger regions or areas, follows almost automatically from the observance of sound engineering principles. The Commission has, at present, no specific rules for achieving or maintaining a "fair distribution," but its decisions are frequently motivated by the reasoning that a particular community has either too little or too much broadcasting service. There is no yardstick, however, based on population, economic considerations or other factors, with the result that the Commission's decisions have been far from consistent, even with respect to a given city. From 1928 to 1936, there was in force a statute called the Davis Amendment, by which Congress directed the Commission, as nearly as possible, to make and maintain an equal allocation of broadcast facilities between five zones into which the country was divided, and a fair and equitable allocation between the States within each zone, according to population. This statute gave rise to a set of Commission regulations setting up a complicated quota system for determining the shares of the zones and the states. For both technical and practical reasons the statute proved impossible of execution, was never rigidly observed, and was finally repealed. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS. It is an obvious corollary of public interest, convenience or necessity that a maximum efficient use be made of the limited number of radio channels. Interference should be reduced to a minimum, and licensees should be required to choose locations, to install apparatus and to operate their stations in such a way as to provide the service over the largest area, with the utmost of clarity and fidelity of reproduction, that is practicable within the limitations imposed by their licenses. Such matters are largely covered by the Commission's regulations and the technical standards recommended by its Engineering Department. A showing of actual or intended compliance with these regulations and standards (or of justification for not doing so) is an exceedingly important part of the case of an 287