SYSTEM IN DANGER

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 148, 19 December 1935, Page 30

SYSTEM IN DANGER

AMERICAN BROADCASTING

George Henry Payne, Federal Communications Commissioner, warned commercial broadcasters they would have to improve their programmes and change their advertising methods if they wanted to maintain the present system of privately-owned radio stations, says an Associated' Press message from New York, dated October 31. In an address at Columbia University, Mr. Payne said: "If there is evident on the part of the broadcasters an,intention to increase the educational and cultural qualities of the programmes, if there is observable a desire to reform the advertising methods 'and inundations with which the public is -afflicted, the present system will be maintained, I believe. SPREAD OF INDIGNATION. "On the other hand, if there is an arrogant assumption of political power, if there.is, instead of reform, increased lobbying activity, the indignation that now is unspoken, except by educators and publicists, will spread. "Now when we come to the question of the 'political status' of radio, it would not be necessary to get into any discussion of the subject were it not that the idea has been advanced that it is an independent political state. The advocates of commercial broadcasting have gone so far as to declare that they constitute a 'fifth estate'—a new political power in the Government. ... NO "FIFTH ESTATE." "The suggestion to create a 'fifth estate1 of the radio broadcasters would, in view of the ignorance of our political and social development, be trivial if it were not for the fact that simultaneously with this suggestion there is in progress an obvious, practical, prag-1 matic endeavour to make the Federal Communications Commission a subservient instrument to commercial radio." . Payne asserted radio could not be classified as a "fifth estate" as the newspaper profession is called the "fourth estate" because broadcasting channels are limited and if any unauthorised person, seeking freedom of speech, were to set up a station, interference would result. With newspapers Payne said, it is different. A person' desiring to give his views, can establish a newspaper in any city or town without interference.