Already the northeastern section of the United States, designated by the Commission as area I, is suffering a shortage of FM channels. That is not true in the less thickly populated areas farther west, but in area I there have not been sufficient channels to meet the demands. In FM, we believe, lies the solution to a free, competitive radio, providing there are sufficient channels available for all who are qualified to become broadcasters under the Communications Act. In the past fortnight the Commission held informal engineering conferences which developed the fact that low-band television below 88 megacycles is experiencing considerable interference. It is on these low bands that television is sharing space with emergency and other services. We sincerely believe that television eventually will find its permanent home in the upper frequencies, above 400 megacycles, where there is sufficient room for expansion. Therefore, we request that the Congress authorize the Commission to add another 20 or 30 FM channels to the present band below and contiguous to 88 megacycles. Television is still in more or less experimental stages, whereas FM is an established service. If the FM band is to be widened-and we believe it must be to provide an adequate Nation-wide service—it should be done before these other services become established and the public is saddled with expensive receiving sets. The CHAIRMAN. It is impossible for us to hear any other witnesses tonight, and we will hear the three remaining NAB witnesses the first thing in the morning and then go on with those that were scheduled for this afternoon. The committee will stand in recess until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. (Thereupon, at 3: 40 p. m., the committee recessed, to reconvene at 10 a. m. Thursday, June 19, 1947.) TO AMEND THE COMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1934 THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 1947 UNITED STATES SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON The subcommittee met at 10 a. m., pursuant to adjournment, in room 318, Senate Office Building, Senator Wallace H. White, Jr. (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators White, Capehart, Johnson of Colorado, and Mag nuson. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please come to order. When we recessed last evening, there were three representatives of the NAB who had not found the opportunity to testify as they wished. I think we should proceed with those three this morning. I understand that Mr. Richards is to be the first witness to appear. Will you go ahead, Mr. Richards? STATEMENT OF ROBERT K. RICHARDS, DIRECTOR, PUBLIC RELATIONS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS, WASHINGTON, D. C. Mr. RICHARDS. Thank you, Senator. My name is Robert K. Richards. I am director of public relations of the National Association of Broadcasters. I wish to offer a statement highlighting the corollary development of publishing and broadcasting in the United States. This is presented in an effort to reinforce the thesis that radio broadcasting is governed by the first amendment to the Constitution and subject, therefore, to the same guaranties of freedom that apply to the press, the pulpit, and public assemblies. This statement is intended as supplemental testimony to that heretofore offered in support of the contention that section 326 of the Communications Act of 1934, section 16 of S. 1333, should be strengthened to provide such guaranties. The CHAIRMAN. Have you any draft of suggested amendments? Mr. RICHARDS. I should say, Senator, that any draft I would offer would be similar to that offered by Judge Miller in testimony yesterday. The CHAIRMAN. Then you are endorsing his suggestion. Mr. RICHARDS. I am endorsing his suggestion. The intention here is to establish that radio in the United States can be as free as the press; that such latitude in broadcasting is desirable, consonant as it is with the requirements of democratic government; that broadcasting will not have attained its full development as an instrument of democracy until the measurement of its performance in the public interest is determined by the people—as is the case in the press-rather than by the licensing authority. That there is danger of censorship where there is power to license is implicit in S. 1333, wherein it is provided that section 16 shall amend section 326 to change the titular heading to "censorship." Appearing in the new language (S. 1333) is the statement: (b) "The Commission shall have no power to censor, alter, or in any manner affect or control the substance of any material to be broadcast, et cetera." If it is the intent of the language to deny all mechanics of censorship to the licensing authority, then section 3 of S. 1333 should contain specific definitions of the words "censor" and "substance." I subscribe to the belief that the Federal Communications Commission's blue book-Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees, March 7, 1946-and the Mayflower decision-which holds that licensees have no privilege of advocacy-are instruments of censorship. There are only two avenues to the thought processes of man: The eye and the ear. If we are to undertake a philosophy of government which anticipates free access to those avenues, as I understand the Bill of Rights to assert, we cannot differentiate between them. Whether a man reads something or hears something does not fundamentally alter the proposition that he thereby acquires knowledge. The same knowledge transmitted over a broadcasting station to lisening ears or transmitted through news columns to reading eyes is, in the final analysis, directed to the mind of man. Consequently one instrument of transmission should be subject to no more control of its product than the other, if the avowed purpose of free media in a free nation is to enlighten the people. If such premise is acceptable, then new legislation governing broadcast licensees should endeavor to clarify beyond any reasonable doubt the limitations placed upon the licensing authority. I do not believe the present act does so, for, despite its language, the Commission has adopted such a decision as that encountered in the Mayflower case; and the Commission has issued the blue book which— as defined by Chairman Charles R. Denny, Jr., before the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives, 1947-establishes "standards" that comprise the gloss which the Commission's decisions have written around the words "public interest, convenience, and necessity." Nor do I believe that S. 1333, as written, does so, for it incorporates in its language the undefined term "substance" and adds the proviso: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to limit the authority of the Commission in its considerations of applications for renewal of licenses to determine whether or not the licensee has operated in the public interest. The Commission's chairman has testified that this phrase "public interest" permits the establishment of standards which represent "gloss." I understand that "gloss" has a special meaning to a lawyer-I am not an attorney, Senator-i. e., functions and powers not conferred by law. Five of the seven members of the Commission are attorneys and would be conversant with this definition, one presumes. If a commission comprised for the most part of attorneys acknowledges that legislative language gives it the power to "legislate beyond the statute," we encounter here two specific dangers: (1) The surrender of legislative power by the duly constituted lawmaking body, the Congress of the United States. (2) Negation of our historic governmental concept that the law should comprehend and make provisions against "the insolence of office." A brief examination of the development of a free press in this Nation illustrates the emergence from "licensed authority" of one of our great media. Movable type was discovered by Gutenberg in 1443. One might consider this in context with the discovery of the audion tube by Dr. Lee DeForest in 1906. The first press established in the Colonies was installed at Harvard College in 1638. Exactly 280 years later, in 1918, vacuum tubes began to replace the old spark and arc transmitters. The CHAIRMAN. May I interrupt? Did I understand you to say that you are not a lawyer? Mr. RICHARDS. I am not a lawyer, Senator. The CHAIRMAN. Well, you are arguing legal and constitutional problems pretty freely for one who is not a lawyer. Mr. RICHARDS. It seems that you are hearing a lot of former newspaper men here, Senator. I am a former newspaper man, and I have had some experience, from observing lawyers at work and associating with them. I think that from here on the principal burden of my testimony will have to do with the relationship between newspapers and the radio. The CHAIRMAN. I just wondered whether this was your production or someone's else. Mr. RICHARDS. This is my own production. Mr. RICHARDS. Quite all right, sir. The first newspaper published in America issued in 1690 from the press of Richard Pierce in Boston, under the masthead "Publick Occurrences." The first regularly operated standard broadcasting station in the United States-KĎKÁ, Pittsburgh, and WWJ, De troit-went on the air in 1920. The early newspapers, such as Publick Occurrences, were licensed by the Crown. And the first radio stations were licensed by the radio division of the Department of Commerce. Radio stations in the early days-circa, 1920-were licensed primarily because of the confusion which resulted from the limitation on the number of available frequencies. The first newspapers were licensed arbitrarily, for purposes of governmental censorship. According to Robert W. Jones in his Journalism in the United States .(E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.) : The first American editors were confronted by coldly hostile officials inclined to discipline any critical comment. This policy is best evidenced by one instruction from the Crown, which stated and for as much as great inconvenience may arise by liberty of printing within our said territory under your Government you are to provide by all necessary orders that no person keeping any printing press for printing, nor that any book, pamphlet, or other matter whatsoever printed without your especial leave and license first obtained. It is interesting to observe, inasmuch as in the current broadcasting legislation we are dealing with the phrase "public interest, convenience, and necessity," that even in this early seventeenth century, regulation by the Crown, the word "inconvenience" was introduced. The term, in this instance, anticipated that the inconvenience was one which the Crown felt would cause most distress to the King's ministers, with little concern given to the "convenience of the public." During these early days of colonial printing, the hand press in usesimilar to the screw-type wine press-was so small that a four-page paper usually required four impressions. The paper was moistened before the impression was taken and between runs the paper was suspended from strings to dry. Printing ink was of poor quality, for the most part home made. It was smeared on the form by hand with a piece of buckskin. One finds analogy here in the early, faltering development of broadcasting-when the few listeners who could hear stations listened on headphones, and found the static as disturbing to their ears as the smeared newspapers were to colonial eyes. Newspaper printing as a mechanical art really made little progress until the nineteenth century. Had Gutenberg walked into an American print shop in 1800, most authorities agree, he would have found little to surprise him. In 1822, Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, built a press with a wooden frame designed to be driven by steam. Isaac Adams, of the same city, improved the Treadwell press in 1830. In 1923, by way of comparison, the principle of negative feedback to stabilize and reduce distortion in transmission circuits, modulators, amplifiers, and detectors, also describing automatic volume control, was developed by Stuart Ballantine. The newspaper then, about one century before broadcasting did so, was emerging from the experimental "baling wire" era as a result of laboratory research. Most of us consider the emergence of broadcasting from a distorted signal reaching a mere handful of people to its position today, 27 years later, as a phenomenon. Yet, the newspaper proceeded from small weekly operation with limited circulation to metropolitan daily operation with large circulation in a span of 30 years only-between 1830 and 1860. In 1775 there were 37 newspapers in the Colonies. In 1840 there were 1,631 in the United States; and in 1850 the figure was 2.302. On January 12, 1922, there were 30 broadcasting stations in the United States; by 1940 there were 814; and by January 1, 1947, there were 1,523. Mechanical development accounted for the increase in both media; mechanical development which made it possible to establish more units and to extend the coverage of the individual units. Impetus was given to newspaper development by the first cvlinder press, developed in 1846. It was installed by the Philadelphia Ledger. A 10-cylinder rotary press was capable of 20,000 impressions hourlyheralding the day of big newspaper circulation. In 1925, KDKA Pittsburgh and WGY Schnectady tested 50,000 watt transmitters which were to multiply manifold the audience |