Radio Monopoly

Radio Record, Volume VI, Issue 10, 16 September 1932, Page 5

Radio Monopoly

American Public Exploited FrOLLowin G upon the revelation that the National Broadcasting Company of the U.S.A. was intent upon increasing its monopoly by the purchase of the comparatively small _ station K.P.0. (with a permit to increase its power to 50 kilowatts), together with that station’s assigned wavelength, the American Radio Audience’ League, has been formed. The price that the N.B.C. has contracted to pay for K.P.O. is six hundred thousand doliars, which is a fabulous sum for a station intrinsically worth only the merest fraction of that amount. This deal has drawn attention to the exploitation of the listener in particular, and the public in general. in a@ mémorial addressed jointly to the

Senate, the House, and the Federal Radio Commission, the fact that the public is being exploited in the interests of big business has been strongly emphasised. A circular letter to Hstenerg says :-- (1) "While the price of receiving sets has fallen low, the broadcasting business, though similarly over expendéd, has waxed fat on its free monopolies of access to several billion dollars’ worth of receiving apparatus, paid for by the public-an open door to most of American’s purchasing power." (2) "With the broadcast channels now apparently free from the "private property" threat, the way seems open to make them publie resources, in fact, as well as in theory-to conserve their tremendous value, and use it to finance teal uninterrupted public service on the air,’ (8) "If that value were collected by the Government as a tax, little if any of it would ever be expended for the broadcasting that the public wants to hear, and the receiver industry needs." (4) "Both the collecting and the expanding would therefore be better done by the most competent discoverable licensees, acting as local "business agents for the radio audience." Who should they be? Write your own ticket. Hardly anyone would be worse qualified for such responsibilities than men with "over-expanded" transmitters on their hands which can be kept profitable only by a corresponding over-expansion of air advertising." "Practically everybody ‘else stands to gain by such a clean-up. Notice that it does not mean jazz lovers of their "hot music," not advertisers of their audience, nor "networks" of their outlets, nor broadcasters of their transmitting properties. What it does mean is giving everybody who has anything to sell a free field to sell it in; progfamme recording, wite transmission radio transmissions, channél occupancy the last-named items to be managed and marketed by Hcensed agents for its rightful owners-the audience,"