The Press and Radio

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 27, 18 January 1929, Page 7

The Press and Radio

Trend in ‘America

N our editorial article, in discussing the proposal that B class stations relying on advertising revenue should be allowed, we suggested that such a procedure would be disadvantageous in promoting antagonism between the Press and radio. After writing that article we -encountered the following letter in the "Editor and Publisher," a leading American trade newspaper. This letter follows an article dealing with the assistance given by the Press to the American radio service on the o@@ion of the presidential elections. Teer incident marks: to our mind the beginning of an important movement in American journalism for collaboration with radio on defined lines. The letter forcibly illustrates the strength of the point we made.

Radio and Elections. TO. "Wditor and Publisher." "Radio and Elections’-that was good of you. It is certainly hitting the ball for a sleepy Press. It was voted a year ago by the members of the Associated Press to give the election returns to the radio hookup, but if my feelings are at all typical of the rest of the fraternity the radio will gather its own news the next time if they give out any election information. To show you that we are asleep in this part of the country at least, I call your attention to the fact that we have peen running a daily programme of rdiio numbers furnished by the Associated Press, and to my horror I only discovered the first of this week that more than half the feature numbers of the various programmes were made up of gum hours. tobacco hours, or some other kind of advertising hours. I immediately awoke and gave orders to ditch the stuff. and wrote to the A.P. division what I had discovered. They agreed it was a discovery and passed the word on. TI note with surprise now that the daily papers on the exchange table continue to run the programme. as is, and find that I was the first guy to awaken from the lethargy. The Republican National Committee paid 600 dollars to have Bill White’s speech broadcast from this city. They only gave him an hour, and the speech would not have been worth a penny for votes had the daily papers neglected to play it up all over the country. : a radio has its place in the sun, any of us will freely and gladly admit that. but when they offer themselves as advertising medium of any consequence, and more especially of a value they set up at present schedules, they are shooting wide of the mark and the daily papers are foolish to dignify their programmes by an advance notice, : More than a half-dozen foreign accounts which heretofore have been exclusively with the daily Press have recently given the big end of their budget to radio, and had the nerve to request reader space in the daily papers to tell the people all about it. . Here’s my hand, "Editor and PubStir the natives up and let’s get.about our business, as it concerns a very important feature. CHAS. SPENCER, General Manger, "Independence (Kan.) Daily Reporter."