Mutual Walks Out

The all-industry National Association of Broadcasters met last week in its 19th annual convention at St. Louis' Jefferson Hotel. And before the week was out radio was decisively split into two rival segments --big NBC and CBS opposed by Mutual Broadcasting System. Mutual had endorsed the Federal Communications Commission's sweeping antimonopoly decrees (TIME, May 12) and cracked the solid network front by signing a sudden armistice with ASCAP.

When N.A.B.'s board met Mutual's challenge by endorsing everything President Neville Miller had said about FCC and Mutual's treaty with ASCAP, Mutual's three principal members--Manhattan's WOR, the Chicago Tribune's WGN and California's Don Lee network--resigned N.A.B. membership. Mutual withdrew from the N.A.B. board.

Blue Blue? Even before sessions ended, network men were back on their business beats seeing agents and sponsors, watching for first trade trends after the FCC decrees. NBC was expected to fight the decrees to the end. But if NBC and CBS found no relief in court or Congress in the next 90 days, what would happen to their business?

NBC's lesser Blue network, likely to be sold or partitioned as a result of one FCC decree, answered jubilantly that it had just landed a new program sponsored by General Electric Co. To his staff, Blue's vice president in charge of sales Edgar Kobak memoed: "Who's blue--not the Blue."

For months the industry has had a pretty good idea that FCC would tell NBC to get rid of Blue. Plenty of people have tried to buy Blue, such as ex-District of Columbia Commissioner George Edward Allen, and even more have been said to have tried, such as Tommy Corcoran; but with all radio in flux, all such attempts have come to nothing. Radiomen guessed the likeliest turn at Blue would be no sale to outside interests, but independent status for the network as a separate corporation, with its stock going to R.C.A.'s present shareholders.

No Blues were noticeable around Mutual. MBS, theoretically a non-profit-making organization which lacks any real central executive, and functions in fact as a glorified switchboard (stations pay wire charges themselves), is in position to meet the rigorous new network limitations imposed by FCC. If, as the decrees in effect ordain, all stations are made mutual, and any station may buy any station's programs, MBS will be on a par with the other chains.

Last week, MBS signed up next October's worldseries baseball broadcasts (sponsor: Gillette Safety Razor Co.). If the FCC order goes into effect as scheduled, MBS will be able to buy time for the event on any station that wants to sell it. It may be the first big event of its kind to go on the air under the new regulations.

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