RCA Wins

Can radio communication be maintained between a broadcasting station and a re- ceiving set without vacuum tubes? Three Federal Radio Commissioners last week legalistically reasoned that it could be, whereas two others insisted it was a physical impossibility.

The case at issue was the renewal of 1,403 Federal licenses granted four subsidiaries of Radio Corp. of America (National Broadcasting, RCA Communications, Radiomarine. RCA-Victor). A Federal Court in Delaware had found that RCA by its patent manufacturing licenses was attempting to monopolize vacuum tubes. The Federal Radio Act bars from the air monopolies of "radio communication." The Radio Protective Association asked the Federal Radio Commission to enforce the law and put RCA off the air (TIME, June 29). This, last week, the Commission, in a 3-to-2 decision, refused to do. A literal-minded majority scanned the Delaware decision, failed to find any reference to a monopoly of "radio communication." The effect of its ruling was that a monopoly of radio apparatus does not constitute a monopoly of radio com- munication.

General Charles McKinley Saltzman, the Commission's chairman, voicing its minority opinion, swept aside legal fictions and declared: ''Receivers are a fundamental part of the apparatus necessary to radio broadcasting communication and the tube is an essential part of such receivers. . . . When considered in the light of this fact . . . Radio Corp. of America was unlawfully attempting to monopolize radio broadcasting communication."

Defeated before the Commission, Oswald Francis Schuette, RPA lobbyist, exclaimed: "An insult to the intelligence of Congress! ... It would be absurd to take the matter to the courts. Congress can work faster than the courts in protecting radio against this monopoly."

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