The Magnificent Seven

Like many another radio-station operator, John M. Norris, of Red Lion, Pa., stopped by the Federal Communications Commission headquarters when he was in Washington recently. What made his visit notable was that Norris, who also happens to be a Bible Presbyte rian minister, brought along six asso ciates. All seven of them planted themselves outside the door of FCC Chairman Rosel Hyde, bowed their heads and began a pray-in, asking the Great Commissioner up yonder to force a decision on a TV franchise application that the FCC has been sitting on.

The Rev. Mr. Norris has been waiting for action on his TV application because the FCC is trying to deal with charges that a Norris-owned radio station violated the so-called "fairness doctrine." Norris' complaint is that his case has been pending since 1965--though that is not very long in terms of the FCC's decision-making process. After all, the agency has yet to settle a dispute over a certain frequency allotment claimed by Manhattan radio station WABC and Albuquerque's KOB; that matter has been pending since 1941. And when the House Commerce Committee recently requested a one-year moratorium on any FCC rules on pay TV, the commission did not mind very much--since the FCC had already managed to avoid settling the issue for 13 years.

Thus it is unsurprising that the poky ways of the FCC tend to bring out not only the prayers but the Don Rickles in most people. Michigan's Democratic Congressman John Dingell said last week that the FCC people "are in such a horrible quagmire of past failures that they can't face any of the problems before them." Newton Minow, the FCC's critical and scholarly ex-chairman, recalls that it was all "a quixotic world of undefined terms, private pressures and tools unsuited to the work." Some of the incumbent commissioners throw up their hands. The youngest of them, Nicholas Johnson, 33, says: "We haven't the slightest idea of what's going out over the air waves."

Equal Time. The latest hassle concerns the commission's "fairness doctrine." Under its equal-time provision, a station that puts one political candidate on the air (except in a news show) must give comparable exposure to his opponents. In the most publicized of what will undoubtedly be many legal tests during the current campaign, Senator Eugene McCarthy claimed equal time after Lyndon Johnson's December "Conversation with the President," which ran on all three networks. The FCC denied the request, declaring that the President was not an avowed candidate at the time. McCarthy then took his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and lost.

Another provision of the fairness rule --obligating stations to offer reply time to victims of "personal attack"--is now also being challenged in the courts by the networks on the ground that the procedure inhibits free speech. Last week, in a typical retreat, the FCC asked that the decision be held off while it considered modification of the rule. Just as typically, the House Investigations Subcommittee plans to move in with two days of hearings on the whole subject this week.

POPSI Project. With some reason, the FCC can answer its critics with the defense that its jurisdiction--the entire publicly owned electromagnetic spectrum--is just unmanageable on a $19 million pittance of a budget. It is the FCC that assigns frequencies to ham operators and taxi fleets, TV stations and aviation controllers. It is trying to clear the maddening interference-ridden nighttime AM radio band and the general clutter that hampered police communications during the Watts, Newark and Detroit riots. When people complain about excessive telephone or telegraph rates, or that radio-controlled garage doors are fouling up aircraft communications, or that shrimp-boat captains are uttering obscenities on ship-to-shore frequencies, it is the FCC that takes the rap. Besides all this, the FCC grapples with Comsat and community TV antenna development, not to mention countless research chores, such as the POPSI Project--measurement of "Precipitation and other types of Off-Path Scatter Interference" on satellite and microwave communications.

With that sort of mind-blowing work load, the FCC, according to its critics, has all but given up and become a popsy of the industry it is supposed to regulate. Its ultimate power, the license revocation, is rarely invoked. And when it proposes an industry rule, the commission invariably backs down before implementation. In 1963, it recommended a regulation codifying the National Association of Broadcasters' own gentleman's agreement of 18 minutes' maximum ad time per hour on radio, and 16 minutes on TV. But as soon as the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee began to rumble about the rule, the FCC withdrew. And last May, the commission approved a license for a Virginia radio station that plans to devote up to 33 minutes an hour to commercials.

Short Circuit. While much of the FCC's impotence can be attributable to congressional and industry manhandling, it is also true that the commissioners themselves have short-circuited their own power. One staff member calls the commissioners "the Magnificent Seven," referring sarcastically to the beleaguered gunfighters in the western movie of that title.

Chairman Rosel Hyde, 67, is a longtime civil servant whose elevation by President Johnson was welcomed by broadcasters who had been uncomfortable under the crusading oratory of Newton Minow and William Henry. The commissioners carrying on the fight today are Nick Johnson, a former Federal Maritime administrator, and Kenneth Cox, 51, an ex-Seattle attorney.

The rest of the Magnificent Seven includes Robert E. Lee, 55, an ex-FBI man; James Wadsworth, 62, onetime U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Robert T. Hartley, 58, nephew of the late Speaker Sam Rayburn; and Lee Loevinger, 54, a former Justice Department trustbuster who barely conceals his contempt for television ("the literature of the illiterate") or for the FCC itself. "I think," he once told a congressional committee, "that there is grave danger that the commission is going to be so busy trying to repress yesterday's technological advances that we will still be working on them by the time they are replaced by tomorrow's technological advances."

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