The Confrontation

At long last, the grand paladins of television confronted their tormentor, FCC Chairman Newton ("Wasteland") Minow, as the FCC last week came to the scheduled closing round of its three-year investigation of television. First man to step up to the microphone, according to the script, was to be CBS's suave President Dr. Frank Stanton. But in a prologue that could turn into a theme, the FCC first put on the stand one of its economists, Dr. Hyman H. Goldin, who in staggering detail spun out the story of network TV's rich growth from earnings of $9,900,000 in 1952 to $95,200,000 in 1960. The implication seemed clear: With all that money, why should not TV--under FCC guidance--spend a lot more for public service programs?

For the rest of the week's performance, the elaborately polite principals acted as if that bristling question had never been suggested. Playing Alphonse, Minow was full of assurances that the FCC is only an interested monitor and does not want to take an active hand in network programming, and he added ceremoniously that "this is the way it should be in a free society. We are determined that it shall so remain."

Gaston Stanton responded that he was all in favor of Minow's plan to require TV set manufacturers to equip their product to receive ultrahigh frequencies, thus opening up some 70 additional channels and creating a new field for new broadcasters. Some of these stations presumably would be run by educational institutions, and some would be able to appeal to intellectually coherent audiences smaller than Gunsmoke pulls.

Looking something like Jack Paar. the FCC's Chief Counsel Ashbrook P. Bryant roamed about with a microphone around his neck, seeking truth. What about sponsor control? How about all those pressures and taboos? "Flyspecks," said CBS-TV President James T. Aubrey. "Completely insignificant." Why did Playhouse go--probably the best dramatic show in TV's brief history--disappear from the air? Because, said Stanton, the audience "became much smaller than we thought it should be." In television a few million viewers are not enough.

Richard Salant, President of CBS News, did some justifiable bragging about the best part of television, pointing out that 17% of the network's total programming is in the news area, and that this year CBS has almost half again as many public-affairs shows as it had last season. (If this was in response to Minow's prodding, he did not say so.) Stanton picked up the theme of TV's inherent greatness --"new worlds, new horizons, new experiences"--and promised that in the American cultural boom of the soaring sixties, television would develop its own classics. Early examples, according to Stanton: CBS's own Accent and CBS Reports.

Next week it will be NBC's turn, and after that ABC. Then the FCC, which has already collected some 10,000 pages of testimony in its various hearings, will produce a written report to the Administration with proposals for legislation. Beneath all of the politeness at the hearings, the blunt issue is government regulation of network practices.

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