Well, when I first went on the Commission, the Communications Act was
anti-monopoly oriented, the idea—
[Recorder is turned off and then back on.] When I first went
on the Commission, the Commission had already adopted what was called
the Chain Broadcasting Regulations. It was trying to maintain a degree
of independence of the local stations, a protection from the networks.
You know, thenetwork contract was the most valuable assest that a
station could have economically. You see, the network was providing your
revenue. They were the ones who had access to the big advertisers and
they provided the programs. So, more and more time was going to network
time and less and less time devoted to the development of local
programs, news discussion or forums for art and music of the community.
So, the network regulations, in the first place, NBC had one network
… there was NBC, CBS and Mutual and NBC was the biggest one
and they were required to divest themselves of a lot of their stations
and that was when you had the NBC and ABC. ABC was carved off of NBC
because NBC's powers were getting too great. Also, there were
limitations on the amount of time, in particular prime time, that the
networks could contract for. Now, they had a way of getting what they
called option time. They would say to a station. "Well, this
nine to ten o'clock
Page 20 hour,
you've got to give us an option on it, so if we do have a
program we want to put in, you can… we can demand that
time." Which mean that the local station that may have built up
a program of its own would have to cancel it if the network wanted to
use that time. So, that was the big issue and the regulations had been
adopted. Well, the National Associations of Broadcasters and the
networks moved into Congress to get that legislation nullified.
Meanwhile, they were challenging the constitutionality of the
regulations in the courts. But Frye was a pretty tough character. Again,
an illustration of how government works, talk about Congressional
pressure. So much power is vested in men on the key committees, the
Corporation Committee or the Interstate Commerce Committee, which then
had jurisdiction over the FCC. The networks would get to these key guys
and win them over, buy them over or what have you, but Frye was tough
enough that he continued to fight this thing and we had our
appropriations cut two or three times and the battle went on for two or
three years. Then, we found that we had more support in Congress than we
ever thought. Some of the other members of Congress who were not on the
key committees began to understand what was going on, so not only was
the case won in the Supreme Court, but Congress
Page 21
ultimately defeated all of the legislation attempting to nullify the
Chain Broadcasting Regulations. I don't think that turned out
to be too effective, but it helped some on the monopoly standpoint. It
was about this time, because of the attacks on the Commission and the
chiseling away at appropriations … and they were cut several
times to impair our effectiveness … I got interested in
trying to meet this … talking about political control and
free speech and government intervention and so on, to show where the
controls really lay, I began to go into the economic controls and we had
a very good guy who was head of the economic section named Dallas
Smythe. I wrote an article which was carried in the
Public
Opinion Quarterly at Princeton, I think the title was
"Freedom of Speech for Whom?" I said that we talked
about government control, but let's see who really is running
the show. Well, here with nine hundred stations on the air, you would
think that you would have enough diversifications and controls to get
some diversification in programming and ideas. But you take a look at it
and 85% of the coverage of these stations was by stations that had a
network affiliation contract and the networks not only controlled the
times that they used for network programs, but they could bring a lot of
pressure to
Page 22 bear on the stations as to other
programs they would carry. Let's say for example that one
station might have a local program that didn't have too large
a listening audience or rating, but it was an enthusiastic audience.
Well, "We don't want all the sets turned off when
our program comes on. You've got to put a more popular
program in there." So, they were doing a lot of dictating of
the programs. You had this seemingly diversification between nine
hundred stations. There were limitations about ownership. I
don't think anyone could own more than seventy-five stations,
but 85% of the coverage was coming through the networks. Then, you take
a look at the networks and you find that they were not such free agents
themselves. Network advertising is
per se, national
advertising. You take a local newspaper at that time, I don't
know what the figures are now, but the advertising revenue was about 85%
local and about 15% national or regional. You had the reverse situation
in the case of the networks and broadcasting stations generally. You
take a look at the revenues of the networks and at that time, as I
recall, something like 20% in the case of each network, 20% of the
revenues came from one national advertiser and something like six
national
Page 23 advertisers provided more than 50% of the
revenue. Well, you follow that through into the advertising agencies and
you will find even more concentration, because advertising agencies
might handle quite a number of accounts and the concentration got even
greater. Well, that created some consternation, but it was still on the
economic side. I suppose that programwise, the most significant
development came with the so called "blue book" from
the Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees, which was
issued in a blue cover. That's the reason it was called a
blue book and it created quite a bit of consternation. Well, the way
these things came about again, Paul Porter was chairman prior to I had
left the Commission, he was a very likeable guy but quite a politician
and ordinarily, renewals of licenses were brought up by the engineering
department in batches of anything from ten to twenty at a time. If we
had no interference problems or technical problems with this station, we
would recommend that their license be renewed and the Commission would
say, "renewed." That was about all there was to it.
Well, I had gone along with this, this was the way they did things, for
quite awhile and then I just happened to take a look at the
Communications Act one day and it said that all renewals shall be
governed by the same
Page 24 considerations as original
grants. The Commission traditionally, going back to the days of the old
Radio Commission, had considered proposed program service as a very
important element. They had to be financially, technically, morally
qualified and all in their proposed program service. Very often, you
might have several applicants for one station and the grant had turned
on the proposed program service. The applicants would make a survey of
the community, at least they said that they had, and if this was an
agricultural community with a good agricultural school, they would try
to tie in with them and have farm programs and not just give them the
weather reports and market reports, but bring to them the newest
developments in seed and fertilizer and so on. Here is a university that
has a good music department there would be a proposal giving them time
for concerts for their students there or if there was a little theater
group that was interested in radio drama, they would give time available
for that. It sounded great. So, after I took a look at the provisions of
the Act, the next batch of applicants that came along presented by the
engineering department, I said, "Well, wait just a minute here,
we haven't got enough information. We are entirely acting on
engineering reports." The Commission also had required every
Page 25 station once a year to present a composite
program log. It was sort of like the comptroller's office
requiring a statement from a bank and not letting you know exactly the
time. But these composite logs had gone right in the files and nobody
had even taken a look at them. So, I said, "We
haven't got enough information." Well, the response
was, "This is the way that we have always done it." I
said, "But that's not what the act says and I want
the record to show that I am refraining from voting because of lack of
information." So, then everytime a batch of renewals appeared
on the agenda,
[unclear] was one that I
worked with closely and several other members of the staff, well, when a
station would come up for renewal, I would say, "Got down and
get me the original application and see what their proposed program
service was and dig out their latest program log and see if they have
any relationship between promise and performance." There was
none whatsoever. The one that had promised all these things about the
agricultural programs and the music programs and disucssion programs,
well, 85% of their time was devoted to nothing but network programs or
plotters, this kind of thing. So, I laid the promise and performance
beside each other and said. "Look here, here's what
we are doing. In this case, there were three competing
Page 26 applicants and we granted the grant on this proposed
program service and look what this guy is doing. We are granting it not
to the best applicant, but the biggest. This is not fair to the public
or to the competing applicants who may make more modest promises but go
about it in a more responsible way."
So, this thing began to build up for months. Everytime, I would be ready
with the dossiers, the promise in the application and the latest log. So
finally, you know, in government, when the evidence builds up to a point
where you've got to do something but there are going to be
repercusions from doing something, you have a study. So, I said,
"Well, I think that we ought to have a study." The
rest of them said, "Well, Cliff, you head up the study and be
the Commission man on it." I had a little money so I was able
to hire two or three people from the outside. Well one man from the
outside, a fellow named Charles Sieckman, who was a neighbor of mine, he
was an Englishman but he was naturalized and had married an American
girl, had been director of talks for the BBC in the early days and had
helped set the thing up and he come to this country on a study of
Canadian broadcasting corporations, the educational potentialities and
how fast or how well they were doing the job. So, he married this
American girl and I think that
Page 27 he had made a
similar study of American broadcasting. So, we were in a carpool and
everyday he sat there and was working for Voice of America during the
war and we would talk about this thing. So, when the time to make the
study which I headed up, I pulled in Ed Breckner, this fellow from the
staff, Dallas Smythe, the head of our economics department and I hired
Charles Sieckman. Well, instead of this study dragging on for a couple
of years, in a month it was ready and that really baffled them. So,
there was nothing to do about it but go along. Paul Porter, meanwhile
the study was underway, he had been appointed head of the Office of
Price Administration and he had resigned at the Commission the day
before the report came out. Well, everybody thought that there was going
to be hell to pay and fireworks, but from the public standpoint, it was
actually remarkable. "This is great. If the Commission would
just live up to this and make the stations live up to this, we will have
good broadcasting." So, Paul saw what the reaction was and he
came over to the Commission and said, "Well, I
wasn't actually on the Commission when the report came in,
but would you mind saying in your public statement that former chairman
Paul Porter said that had he still been on the Commission, he would have
gone along with
Page 28 this report with considerable
enthusiasm." Well, we talked about the responsibility for a
balanced points of view and the commercialization … not
specific programs, but we would avoid saying that one particular program
was lousy and another good, but the types of programs. So, we said that
these stations that didn't live up to their own promises were
going to be set at a hearing. I think that I am the only member of the
Commission that ever voted not to renew a license and that took a few
very extreme cases. You are not going to do any good just renewing these
licenses
[unclear] . So, when Charlie Denny
was then chairman, he would go around all over the country making these
speeches, "The blue book will not be breeched." He was
all for it, but then whenever a station came up for renewal, they would
give them a lecture and saythat this station had been doing this and
that but then say that it had promised to do better and that after all,
the death penalty was too severe and so on and they would renew it. So
gradually, the thing began to drift back into the old pattern. Then
about the same time, the
[unclear] case
was one of the cases that attracted a great deal of attention. I had
made a few gestures, I knew that I wasn't going to get
anywhere with it but I wanted to get some consideration
Page 29 and I think it was a power company that I wrote a
dissenting memorandum against them in a hearing, that they were
acquiring a radio station. My position was that broadcasting ought to be
run by broadcasters and not be permitted to become a mere adjunct of
large business concerns, that they wouldn't be fair
competitors from the business standpoint, but I thought you have to have
[unclear] there at all times to
consider the problems. This was a pretty complicated business that was
dealing with the minds and emotions of people. I tried to get some
discussion on it. Well, one of the biggest stations in the country, a
fifty kilowatt station, WLW, operating out of Cincinnati, it blanketed
the whole Mississippi Valley, owned by the Corporation. It was pretty
much of a family affair, but he had other manufacturing interests. So,
they came to the Commission and wanted to sell the station and for the
Commission to approve the transfer to the Aviation Corporation of
America. Well, I insisted that that be set down for a bearing, it was
one of the most important stations in the entire country. So, they
agreed to go along with the hearing and the APCO people came in, Paul
Porter was still chairman at the time. So, this was a little bit before.
We get the high officials of AVCO in the station and they said,
"Well, we are buying the broadcasting properties as part of
Page 30 the package. We are more interested in their
manufacturing facilities." They hadn't the slightest
idea of what the responsibilities of a breadcasting license was and how
much time they were going to devote to this kind of program and the
other. They just had a complete unawareness of what broadcasting was
about. But they had a board of directors and on it was a fellow named
George Allen. He was a lobbyist a round Washington and told good stories
and he had access to most anywhere. So, they put him on and he made some
wisecracks and I knew right then what was going to happen. Paul Porter
was going along with it. The transfer was approved and I wrote a
dissenting memorandum that went into this thing at great length and
Wakefield and Walker also went along with me and wrote separate
memorandums not going quite as far as I did. But that occassioned one of
the key policy decisions. Then after the blue book, I think the one that
attracted the most attention, got me in the most trouble, was the Scott
case. You know, nobody can be more devout than a devout atheist. Scott
was a retired court reporter out in San Francisco and he was an atheist
and he made it his lifetime cause to see to it that the atheist point of
view was broadcast. So after the blue book came out,
Page 31 we had talked about the responsibility of the stations to present all
points of view and so on, and so he had approached the three leading
stations in San Francisco and asked them for time to present the atheist
argument and they had all turned him down. Well, he then preceded to
draw up a formal complaint asking that the licenses of these stations be
set down for a hearing at renewal. And it was a pretty intelligently
done job. He said, "I'm not the kind of fellow that
goes around throwing bricks in church windows or scoffing at people
kneeling in prayer. I respect the idea that persons may have the
religious views that they want, but where the point comes in is where
they say I can't present the atheist point of view. I
don't want to berate anybody, I just want to make a rational
presentation of the atheist argument. As far as are concerned, these
stations are giving free time to religious broadcasters or churches and
so on. Not only are they giving them free time, which puts the whole
thing out of balance, but they are letting a lot of these preachers who
get on devote themselves to attacks on atheists, saying that they are
irresponsible and criminally inclined because they don't have
the sanction of a belief in God and I think
Page 32 that I
am entitled to be heard." So, then the Commission, what it
normally did, we sent the complaint to each of the three stations and
asked what they had to say about it. Well, one of the stations came back
with a very intelligent response. They said it was all a degree of
interest and that "unlike a newspaper that can add another
page, we can't add another hour to the day and if every
single viewpoint was presented, we would have to be giving time to
people to prove that the earth is flat and all of that." But
they said that in the showing of enough interest and that if there was a
responsible presentation, it ought to be considered. The other two
stations were very righteous about it. "It would be contrary to
the public interest to ever permit the cause of atheism to be presented
on the air. We would not present that or permit it." So, the
Commission was sort of on a spot. They said, "Well,
let's just dismiss his complaints. If we go into a hearing,
we would have to put the licenses of nine hundred stations in it because
they are all doing the same thing and we are certainly not going to
revoke the licenses without some warning of responsibility. I said,
"We aren't going to revoke licenses but we said in
the blue book that all points of view should be expressed and there is
some interest in this area, but if
Page 33 we just dismiss
this with a simple order, in the public mind, it will be taken as a
confirmation of the position of these two stations, that the
presentation of the cause of atheism would be contrary to the public
interest." So I said, "I am not going to vote for a
revocation of license or even a hearing, but I want my views to go out
as a notice to the broadcasters and the public generally about their
responsibility. Then we can be specific about it and next time we can
take more drastic action." So, they agreed to pass a week and I
spent my time writing a dissenting memorandum. Well, I
wouldn't say, "dissent", because I was not
voting to revoke the licenses or anything of that sort but I said,
"Here is the position that I think the Commission should
take." So, I took the First Amendment and I went back to
Lincoln and Jefferson and said that they wouldn't be allowed
on the air because one of them was accused of being atheist and their
ideas of God were so varied that one man can say, "Well,
he's an atheist. He says that he is for God, but his God is
entirely different from mine." There was a lot about free
speech and all, but I must have hit the right balance, that they
didn't want to be against God, but they didn't
want to be against free speech, either. So, much to my surprise, Denny
began to stir around and when it came up at the next meeting, they
Page 34 agreed to adopt my memorandum as a unanimous
statement of the Commission's position. Well, ordinarily, the
Commission's decision was issued over the name of the
Secretary unless there were areas of dissent and the name of the
dissenter would go on, but this was a majority position. But it got out
and my memorandum had to be rewritten to fit into the context of the
situation. Sol Teschoff of
Broadcasting Magazine,
somebody on the staff leaked to him that I had written it. And he came
out with an editorial … well, when I was on the Commission,
he began every other week to regularly have an editorial going after me,
but in any event, he came out strongly for God in his editorial. Then I
began to hear from the good religious folks. Some of them were telling
me how hot hell was and others were saying—