Delayed Purge

When the President a year ago lifted Frank Ramsay McNinch out of the Federal Power Commission to make him Federal Communications Commission chairman, the reported purpose of that shift was a cleanup of FCC. A yardstick man with a reputation of being a tough administrator, Chairman McNinch was expected to purge either FCC or the radio industry, possibly both. But canny New Dealer McNinch stepped into his new job cautiously, made a long series of requests to broadcasters for detailed information, studied his FCC staff with equal care.

Early this summer an investigation of radio monopoly was in preparation, and Chairman McNinch told a meeting of the American Radio Relay League's Atlantic Division that the efficiency of the FCC staff would have to be increased. Soon afterward a stomach ailment put the milk-drinking chairman in Naval Hospital.

Last week the doctors turned him loose and promptly he went into action, asked the Civil Service Commission to exempt some 53 FCC positions, requested the resignation of FCC General Counsel Hampson Gary. FCCommissioners George Henry Payne and Tunis Augustus Mac-Donough Craven disagreed with their chairman on the requested exemptions, made their dissent public. Lawyer Gary refused to resign, refused a transfer to RFC. So Chairman McNinch demanded his dismissal, ousted the general counsel with the support of Commissioners Eugene O. Sykes, Thaddeus H. Brown, Paul A. Walker. Commissioners Payne and Craven again dissented. Commissioner Norman S. Case, ill, did not vote.

The ousted counsel, a onetime diplomat (Woodrow Wilson's Minister to Switzerland) and a onetime FCCommissioner, is a Texan who is said to have the support of Vice President John Nance Garner, Majority Leader Sam Rayburn, Senator Morris Sheppard. Heavy-jowled, 63-year-old Hampson Gary's legal department has taken an awful kicking around in the courts recently. Only last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (No. 1 radio court) rebuked FCC lawyers for the ineptitude of their procedure when, after much time and money had been spent on a case involving the delicensing of two small Brooklyn stations, they confessed error in their statement of facts. Last fortnight FCC was embarrassed by its law division when station WTCN (Minneapolis) was cited for hearing on charges of broadcasting profanity in NBC's radio revival of Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon. FCC rescinded the order within a few days but haters of prudery and censorship had already sharpened their knives on the commission's hide.

Chairman McNinch's new general counsel is 33-year-old William James Dempsey, whom he brought with him from the Power Commission as his assistant. Last July Lawyer Dempsey was appointed special counsel for FCC's monopoly investigation. Although the new occupant of the $9,000-a-year job is the son of New Mexico's Congressman John J. Dempsey, he was a PWA lawyer before the elder Dempsey's election four years ago. Curly-haired, blue-eyed, unexcitable as a mathematics instructor--which he was while studying at Georgetown Law School--young Dempsey went direct from PWA to the Power Commission.

At week's end the subcommittee (Commissioners Case, Payne, Craven) which conducted hearings on station WLW's (Cincinnati) experimental superpower license renewal, recommended that WLW's whopping 500-kw. (see p. 52) not be renewed. In that event Mr. Powel Crosley, man of many businesses (see p. 66), instead of having the most powerful station in the U.S. would have to be content with a standard 50-kw. outfit. If the commission as a whole should follow its subcommittee's recommendation, Counsel Dempsey is likely soon to have a big radio case to see through the courts.

When he announced the Gary ouster to the press, Chairman McNinch said that further changes in FCC personnel would be made, promised action before February 1. In reply to those who see in Commissioners Payne and Craven a permanent and vocal opposition, a possible repetition of the TVA imbroglio. Chairman McNinch indicated that, unlike TVA's former chairman, he not only has a majority with him but White House approval.

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