AN AMERICAN COMMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1932, Page 17

AN AMERICAN COMMENT

Dr. Lee de Forest is no friend of the American system of financing broadcast'■ingjby means of "selling time" to advertisers; and in a Christmas forecast for 1932, published in the "New York Times," he expresses a hope that a Ilieence system may bo adopted. He suggests ,the possibility of a Government tax on radios. "Such proposed taxes should be most welcome if the proceeds therefrom were to go towards elevating the quality of radio programmes, with elimination of all direct sales talk. But they won't be thus devoted; not this session of Congress!

Many former radio enthusiasts fervently hope for this eventuality." Television, Dr. de Forest proceeds, is approaching a state whore fairly clear and entertaining pictures could soon be shown in the homes of those able to pay several hundred dollars for television receivers. . . . It is vitally important for all concerned that those who are to be entertained by television shall be made to pay regularly, in some form or other, for that entertainment— either by rental of leased equipment or by contract calling for monthly payment for the programmes supplied them. Lacking some such rational business basis television, like radio, would inevitably degenerate into over-produc-tion, _ junk equipment, cut-throat competition, and programmes so smeared with billboard advertising that few would care to endure the thing after the first novelty had passed.