Ink & Air

Last year national advertisers paid $145,000,000 to U. S. newspapers, because a news-thirsty public bought 35,175,000 newspapers every day. Last year national advertisers paid $49,500,000 to radio broadcasters because 18,500,000 households listen to Radio's music, patter and melodrama every day. If Radio also broadcast complete news, many a listener would not bother with newspapers.

Therein lies the prime reason for a chronic warfare between Press and Radio, which for eight months has been held within bounds only by an armed truce.

Last week in Manhattan the old battle seemed about to break into fresh fireworks. Station WOR (Macy's and Bambergers department stores) proposed to fill the air with an hour's news every day. News on the Air, For a time Radio helped itself to the columns of newspapers. When the Press protested such flagrant thieving, an arrangement was made whereby Radio was supplied with reports from Associated Press, United Press and International News Service, to be broadcast with full credit. The front remained reasonably quiet until election night, 1932.

Then Radio roundly scooped the Press with the latter's own costly reports of the ballot counting. The Press rose up angrily and vowed never again to hand its precious stock-in-trade over to its most dangerous competitor. Columbia Broadcasting System organized its own newsgathering service, proceeded to sell a news program to commercial sponsors.

The Press threatened to throw all CBS program announcements out of the newspapers, hinted darkly at a newspaper lobby potent enough to put Radio under stricter government control. Frightened, CBS talked peace, scrapped its news service. Out of that armistice last February grew Press-Radio Bureau (TIME, Feb. 12). Press-Radio Bureau, maintained by the major news services and the broadcasting chains, prepares two daily five-minute broadcasts of news from AP, UP and INS. Also it is supposed to release flashes of "transcendental" importance as they occur.

About 215 stations use this sanctified service, but many an independent wants more. Their rebellion this year bred a rash of news agencies, designed to furnish broadcasters with all the news they wanted. Most of them were tiny enterprises which soon vanished. By last week the most important left in the field was Transradio Press Service.

Transradio Press Service. If UP's Karl Bickel or AP's Kent Cooper should walk into the Transradio office in Manhattan, he could plant himself in the news editor's chair, roll up his sleeves and run the show with practically no coaching. With its news editors, rewrite men and teletype operators, the place looks, sounds, smells and works like a wire service office in any U. S. city. But there is an invisible difference: The teletyped news reports flash cross-country not into newspaper offices but into 50 broadcasting stations.

Another 75 radio clients receive a limited news budget by short-wave wireless. Transradio boasts ten full-fledged bureaus in U. S. key cities, 540 active string correspondents. It gets its foreign news from France's Havas, Britain's Central News. Proudly Transradio declares that the U. S. Press, for all its bitterness, has never openly accused it of lifting news out of domestic newspapers. One reason Transradio functions like a press service is that its head man, Herbert Moore, is an oldtime UP correspondent with eight years service in Washington, Manhattan and London. When radio-news became a business last spring, he leaped into the muddy pool of independent upstarts, came up with the financial support of a publisher and a broadcaster whose names he keeps secret.

Also he tied up long-term contracts with Guy Earl's station KNX in Hollywood, Stanley Hubbard's KSTP in St. Paul. From a slowstart, Transradio rolled up many a potent client--the Michigan Network, the Yankee Network in New England, WLS in Chicago, KWK in St. Louis.

For sums ranging from $15 a week for Caspar, Wyo. to $1,000 a week for Yankee Network, the stations receive up to 50,000 words a day of finished news stories, ready for reading by the announcer. At almost any hour the station chooses, it can have enough fresh news for a 15-minute broadcast. It can, and occasionally does, scoop the official Press-Radio Bureau on such news as the Stoll kidnapping, the assassination of King Alexander, the extradition of Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

In Manhattan the largest radio audience in the land has thus far been given nothing but the official five-minute releases of the Press-Radio Bureau. Last week "Herb" Moore's Transradio Press announced its biggest coup. Beginning this week potent WOR will serve Manhattan & vicinity four 15-minute news periods, supplied by Transradio, at 8 a. m., noon, 5 p. m., 11 p. m. For that exclusive privilege, Transradio expects to collect $1,500 a week. If and when WOR sells the periods to commercial sponsors, Transradio wants $5,000 a week.

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