Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1963)

4-TELEVISION DIGEST AUGUST 26, 1963 Statement says that minimum of 20,000 homes each are to be linked by cable in San Francisco & Los Angeles by start of system July 1964 Two telephone companies have agreed to make engineering studies of cable -stringing job, but no contracts for job have been signed. Giants are to get 2^^ of gross receipts up to $1. 5 million, 33 \J%% thereafter, for its home games; Dodgers would get $200,000 initially, then 33 1/3% of receipts. Deals are for 5 years. Showman Sol Hurok also has been signed— to 5-year $10, 000-a-month contract plus 0. 5% of receipts on shows he supplies. Price to subscribers: $10 installation, $4 monthly, plus $1-$1. 50 for most games and shows. Counsel for Subscription TV Inc. is Hughes, Hubbard, Blair & Reed, One Wall St. , N. Y. Statement also reports law suit against firm by Standard Kollsman which claims company is bound by 1958 contract under which Standard was to supply 100,000 "program selectors." Lear-Siegler is supposed to make them now. On another pay-TV front, Home Entertainment Co. of America (Oliver Unger, chmn.), 19th & Broadway, Santa Monica, Cal. , reported plans to start pay-TV cable system in Houston by mid-1964 — tieing up with Houston businessman C. J. Tacconelly. Company said it's also studying Dallas, Ft. Worth, Austin. ACLU QUESTIONS FCC FREE-SPEECH ’EXPERTISE’: Unique "smut" case-FCC's license denial of radio WDKD Kingstree, S. C. year ago (Vol. 2:31 p3)— may be on way to becoming a classic in tortuous history of "obscenity. " FCC had denied license because it concluded that DJ Charlie Walker had broadcast material "coarse, vulgar, suggestive, and susceptive of indecent, double meaning." It also held that licensee E. G. Robinson was guilty of "misrepresentation" to Commission. WDKD challenged decision in Court of Appeals, and last week American Civil Liberties Union filed amicus curiae brief on behalf of station. It picked interesting coimsel for the job— Harry Plotkin. As FCC asst. gen. counsel over decade ago, Plotkin probably would have been just as rough on station as Commission is now. But, he says, "I think I’ve learned a little since then." He left FCC for private practice in 1951. Position expressed in brief is this: FCC has come up with "vague standards." (1) "Vague standards are not fair to the licensee who must conform his conduct to govt, directives." (2) "Vague standards have a stvdtifying effect that goes beyond the individual licensee." (3) "Adequately stated standards are necessary if effective judicial review is to be maintained." Here's guts of brief: "The statute authorizes the Commission to proceed with respect to 'obscene' programs, but the Commission has chosen not to do so. While ACLU recognizes that the test of obscenity is itself most difficult of application, nevertheless the fact remains that there have been several hundred years of judicial history interpreting the word and many learned articles have been written on the subject. With respect to the standard utilized by the Commission there is no judicial history to aid us. Nor does the Commission in its opinion furnish any narrowing or limiting scope. . . "The Commission has frequently criticized broadcasting as a 'vast wasteland. ' This criticism is not predicated upon any daring excursion by licensees into new fields. On the contrary the criticism has been of sameness, safe programs, timidity of approach. Yet the same agency that criticizes broadcasting on this score is one that in the next breath cautions licensees that they must not put on any programs that are judged patently offensive by . . .the housewife, the teen-ager, the young child." As for "misrepresentation" issue, ACLU argues that: (1) "Even though the Commission has indicated that it would have denied a renewal on misrepresentation alone had not the vulgarity issue been present, the intensity of its views on vulgarity is so strong that ACLU believes that some Commissioners might have voted a different way if they knew they could not have relied on the vulgarity issue for denial of license.” (2) FCC refused initially to give station copies of tapes it considered "vulgar"— "a procedure which almost smacks of entrapment." Another brisk comment: "While the courts are required to show deference to the findings and rulings of the Commission in the area of its expertise, ACLU submits that in the area of free speech the Commission has no specialized expertise."