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FEDERAL RADIO REGULATION— Continued
merits or demerits of its provisions if thus applied.* The bill was unexpectedly passed by the Senate just prior to its adjournment in the summer of 1939, but was reconsidered and placed on the calendar on the assurance that it would be taken up at an early date during the next session. On April 18, 1940, the billf was passed by the House (282 to 97). Vigorous efforts were made to have it acted on by the Senate but were unsuccessful, partly because of pleas by administration leaders that Congress should await the completion of the work of the Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure before taking up the bill, and partly because of the exigencies of legislation having to do with national defense and related matters.
THE DITTER-BAILEY BILL. On February 16, 1940, Representative Ditter, of Pennsylvania, introduced a bill** designed to minimize the danger of arbitrary action on applications and the exploitation of procedural loopholes in the Act for the purpose of censorship. Among other things, it proposed that a minimum license period for broadcast stations be fixed at three years, with a maximum of fivef f ; that persons who would be adversely affected by the granting of an application should be accorded a hearing; that revocation orders should be preceded, instead of followed, by hearings ; and that no adverse action of any character should be taken against either applicants or licensees because of the character or contents of any program, unless such program contains matter expressly forbidden by the Act or by regulation of the Commission authorized by the Act, and then only after the licensee has been finally adjudged guilty by a federal court of one or more violations, and the offense is of so serious or repeated a nature as to show clearly that the licensee or applicant is not qualified in character to operate a radio station.
The bill also sought to place limitations on the extremely broad powers given the President by the Act, both in connection with the assignment of frequencies to Government stations and in time of war, threat of Avar, a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency, or in order to preserve the neutrality of the United States. Beginning in the Fall of 1939, there was increasing sentiment to the effect that Congress should establish safeguards against abuse of such powers, and there was agitation for repeal of the pertinent provisions of Sec. 606 of the Act. The Ditter Bill sought to provide these safeguards by providing for hearings where the assignment of a frequency to a Government station would make impossible
* See the author's analysis of the bill in the issues of the Congressional Record for April 18, 1940, p. 7225, and May 30, 1940, p. 10914.
tH. R. 6324.
** H. R. 8509, S. 3515, 76th Cong., 3rd Sess.
tfThe Act now permits a maximum of three years and the Commission actually issues licenses on a one-year basis. The Senate bill provided a maximum license period of 10 years.
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