Question

If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station, and the Commission shall make rules and regulations to carry this provision into effect: PROVIDED, that such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast under the provisions of this section. No obligation is hereby imposed upon any licensee to allow the use of its station by any such candidate.

So reads Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934, giving the FCC the job of setting rules for radio's participation in political campaigns. Since the Communications Act became law, four years of election campaigns have passed into history, one Presidential contest. Loud cries of foul! rose from candidates who thought themselves victims of station discrimination. But the FCC left its mandate untouched.

With a fifth campaign coming to decision in November, FCC Chairman Frank Ramsay McNinch last week announced that he would lay before his Commission the question of promulgating rules for distributing time to political candidates. A formal petition for campaign regulations recently came from station WTAR (Norfolk, Va.). WTAR was tired of having to take on itself the politically dangerous (as well as costly) responsibility of allotting politicians the use of its station.

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