FCC v. Publishers

Of the 883 U.S. radio stations, newspaper publishers own 294 and are busily engaged in trying to expand their holdings via Frequency Modulation. In the eyes of the New Deal, which has often made clear that it doesn't like newspapers and does like radio, this is very bad business. Last week in Manhattan able, soft-spoken Mark Ethridge, vice president and general manager of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Louisville Times and former president of the National Association of Broadcasters, reported to his fellow publishers what his committee had been able to find out about the Government's plans.

Quite cold was the turkey Mr. Ethridge dished up. Last month the Federal Communications Commission ordered hearings held to determine whether joint control of radio stations and newspapers results in "an impairment of radio service." However friendly the hearings, Mark Ethridge pointed out, publishers would have no easy time making a winning case for their radio activities. To make sure their side was well presented, the publishers agreed to raise $200,000 by means of a levy on their radio earnings. Only dissident to the committee's program was Robert McCormick's WGN which, like Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune, is an industrial lone ranger.

As outlined by Chairman James Lawrence Fly, the FCC hearings will try to show the bad effect of one-sided opinion on a community where all channels of information are concentrated in one ownership.

Busy last week in Washington was Maine's Senator Wallace H. White Jr., co-author of the original Radio Act of 1927, pondering a bill calling for the reorganization of FCC and an investigation of its activities. Senator White tirelessly points out that FCC was set up merely as a licensing body, views with alarm its New Dealish tendency to use the power to license as a power to reform. Should Senator White introduce a reorganization bill before FCC goes to work on the publishers, the Commission may find itself too busy covering its own chin to throw any punches at the publishers.

In any case, FCC will have to egg-walk around many political considerations when it begins its hearings scheduled for next month. Of the 290 stations in Dixie, 125 are owned by newspapers, nearly all of which are Democratic. Among Administration friends who may be put on the spot: Jesse Jones (Houston Chronicle, KTRH), Amon Carter (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, WBAP, KGKO), James M. Cox (Dayton, Ohio News; Springfield, Ohio News; Springfield, Ohio Sun; Miami, Fla. News; Atlanta Journal; WHIG, Dayton, Ohio; WIOD, Miami, Fla.; WSB, Atlanta, Ga.).

Last fortnight, despite FCC's reluctance about granting licenses to publishers, Jesse Jones was given a green light to increase the power of his Chronicle station, KTRH, in Houston. He is one of three exceptions to the FCC's policy of holding newspaper applications until after its hearings.

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