Red & Black

However radio broadcasting may stack up among the arts, it is no slouch as a business. Last week the Federal Communications Commission, after looking at the records of the 660 active U. S. commercial broadcasting stations and the three major networks which feed 350 of them, revealed how radio stood in 1938. Its plant value and investment totaled $1,068,339,901. Total revenues (time sales, talent placing, rental of network facilities, etc.) were $111,358,378. Broadcasting expenses (talent costs, advertising, promotion, administration, etc.) were $92,503,594. Net income from broadcasting in 1938: $18,854,784, 17% less than 1937's net.

But if broadcasting business generally was comfortably in the black for 1938, a peep at who made how much revealed some disquieting statistics. Of the 660 stations in business, 419 made money, one broke even, and 240 were in the red. Of the luckless 240, 175 were "teakettle" stations doing a time-sales business of less than $25,000 a year, most of them low-wattage local stations. The 350 network-affiliated stations as a group had 77% of the industry's revenue.

FCC's statistics on radio as an employer revealed radio as the highest-paying industry in the U. S. Of its 1938 payroll of $45,663,757, some 18,300 full-time employes averaged $45.20 a week, 4,000-odd part timers, $23.55 weekly. This put radio, by comparison with 1937, a cut above cinema ($41.33), well above Wall Street ($34.47), way above manufacturing ($22.46).

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