Variety radio directory (1940)

FEDERAL RADIO REGULATION— Continued Another and closely related innovation is that the issues specified in the notice of hearing are to be confined to those which appear to the Law Department to furnish clear and adequate grounds for denial of the application, leaving for later hearing (if necessary) other issues raised by the application. Provision is made in the rules for motions by interested parties to "enlarge the issues," but in the opinion rendered by Commissioner Payne on October 2nd so rigorous interpretation was given this provision as to make it of little value. The principal sufferers are licensees of existing stations located in the same community as the proposed new station, who would be affected economically through increased competition. Similarly affected are competing applicants for new stations in the same community. Several rejected petitioners appealed their cases to the full Commission, but on October 10, 1939 the Commission, with two members absent, upheld Commissioner Payne's rulings, without, however, specifically adopting his opinion or reasons. The whole question has been complicated by extreme positions urged by the Commission's Law Department before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court of the United States, with varying degree of success, on both the substantive and the procedural aspects of the Act, as shown in Part IV of this article. Some of the major issues have not been judicially determined and court decisions on these and other issues are being ignored. Actually, application of the rule has varied through the year, depending on the viewpoint of the particular Commissioner presiding over the Motions Docket in a given month, and on the varying interpretations given to the court decisions reviewed in Part IV. In later months there has been a notable tendency toward a more liberal policy, and petitions to intervene regularly denied in the earlier months are now more frequently granted. The innovations just described are part and parcel of the pattern noted in the introduction to this article. They continue the attempt, which began with the elimination of the Examining Department in November, 1938,* to substitute the so-called investigative technique for the notice-andhearing procedure up to the very limit (and, in the writer's opinion, beyond the limit) permitted by the Act and the decisions of reviewing courts, and to minimize the rights and opportunities of persons adversely affected to place obstacles in the wray of its decisions. For three years a continuing effort had been made by the Federal Communications Bar Association to bring about needed miscellaneous reforms in the rules, having to do largely with imperfections in the "red tape" category, some of which obstructed efficiency while others imposed unjustifiable hardship or expense on parties. A committee had cooperated with the Commission's Law Department in a series of almost weekly meetings. To a very satisfying extent, the Association's efforts were successful and several imperfections were remedied in the revision effective August 1, 1939. THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE. Attention was focused on the Commission's new procedure by a study made public in February, 1940 by the Attorney * Variety Radio Directory, III, p. 901. 412