Radio v. New Deal

COMMUNICATIONS Radio v. New Deal

When the men of radio, 1,100 strong (and younger and sleeker than most conventioneers), met last week in St. Louis for the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, the world of radio was in process of disintegration. Not only did the industry split in the midst of its war with ASCAP (see p. 77), but it plunged into a new and greater war with the New Deal.

Fortnight ago FCC Chairman James Lawrence Fly had cut loose with a report on radio as a monopoly, a report which threatened to topple the whole controlling superstructures of the two big chains, NBC and CBS (TIME, May 12). Mark Ethridge, liberal, sense-making general manager of the Louisville Courier-Journal, the industry's keyman and ex-radio tsar, had just promised President Roosevelt to make a general survey of the industry. After the report, to start the survey would have been like beginning a census of Yugoslavia the day after the Nazis launched their Blitz.

At St. Louis, choleric Neville Miller, Louisville chum of quiet Mark Ethridge, and now $40,000-a-year president of the N.A.B., blasted the monopoly report. Snapped Fly: "These men, to divert attention from the fact of monopolistic control in their hands, conjure up insistently the bogey man of Government operation." Retorted Miller: "It may be that those who think Government operation is essential are conjuring up the bogey man of monopoly."

Then Mark Ethridge's patience cracked: in a scourging speech he resigned from making his radio survey, said that the President "was deceived" and "almost betrayed," and bitterly denounced the attempt to regulate the radio industry by "bad temper, impatience and vindictiveness." Fly, waiting on the platform to answer Ethridge, watched in amazement while Miller swiftly adjourned the sessions without calling on him.

Fly reddened, shouted: "You promised me ... a chance to answer." Snapped Miller: "I did not." Then Fly rushed out to the street, paced up & down the block, cracking his knuckles in anger. To reporters, whom he has distrusted ever since he was TVA's general counsel, he roared: "Leave me alone!" Next day he issued a sharp statement in reply. He said the N.A.B. management was like a remark by John Randolph of Virginia: "It reminds me of a dead mackerel in the moonlight, it both shines and stinks."

At the banquet closing the convention,

Master of Ceremonies George Jessel announced a song: "You Can't Come Into My Parlor, Said the Networks to the Fly." Then radio men turned homeward, determined to get a Congressional investigation of FCC, but more than a little leery of what such an investigation might turn into. They saw no help from their onetime great friend, Franklin Roosevelt. When reporters had asked him to comment on the scrap he waved an airy hand, said there were more important things to think about. And the new week's news was worrisome: Congress suddenly got ready to give Trust Buster Thurman Arnold the unprecedented sum of $750,000--just about enough to investigate radio, observers guessed. And radio's in-&-out friend, Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, announced he would begin hearings May 31 on a bill for a radio investigation. Radio men wondered: would FCC or the industry be the target of the inquisition?

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