Radio Census

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 8, 6 September 1929, Page 8

Radio Census

America Leads the Way DECISION of far-reaching importance in the development of America. radio was reached when by a vote of 85 to 18, the Senate moyed a "radio census .to be taken in 1930 apart from the decennial population census," says an American paper. The vote was taken with practically no debate and only one Senator spoke in opposition. The industry stands to benefit tremendously from such a measure. In a country as huge as America there has hitherto been no means of procuring accurate data, and the statistics it has furnished the Gov ernment from time to time are admittedly guess work. Manufacturers have constantly demanded that the Government should help them to establish a trustworthy basis for calculation, but the Department of Commerce has hitherto not taken steps to co-operate. The latest "guess": was made by a large manufacturing firm early this year. It placed the number of receiv-.. ing sets of all grades at 9,640,000, with 45,000,000 listeners and estimated that approximately 19,000,000 of the 28,000,000 homes in the United. States were without wireless sets. The radio census would also provide: the means for a much fairer wireless administration than exists to-day. It would make possible.the allocation of broadcasting facilities on the basis of~. "radio population" in given areas. To the broadcaster, wireless advertiser, anc. political campaigner it would furnish an accurate count of the number of listeners reached by a particular station. It will indeed be interesting to see what this census will disclose and how: far this "guess" differs from the actual