Educators and the Battle
to Control US Broadcasting

excerpted from the book

Rich Media, Poor Democracy

by Robert McChesney

The New Press, 1999

p190
... When one looks closely at the origins of U.S. broadcasting ... the paltry status of public service broadcasting in the United States was not necessarily inevitable, and it certainly was not regarded as a "given" in the 1920s and early 1930s. When the modern network-dominated, advertising-supported system did emerge, between I927 and I932, various elements of U.S. society reacted with outrage and organized to establish a significant nonprofit and noncommercial component to the U.S. system.

The single most important opponent to commercial broadcasting in the I930s came from the ranks of education. Educators formed the vanguard of a broadcast reform movement that attempted to establish a U.S. broadcasting system where the dominant sector would be nonprofit and noncommercial. The attraction of educators to broadcasting was uncomplicated; many regarded radio and other systems of communication as logically part of the nation's broader educational network and therefore fully within their purview. These educators were enamored of radio's general capacity to promote a democratic political culture far more than they were interested in the medium's potential as a classroom supplement, although these interests were not negligible. They regarded the profit motive as being nearly as inimical to democratic communication as it would be to public education. Their efforts for reform were directed by the National Committee on Education by Radio (NCER), a group supported by the Payne Fund and established in I930.

p213
The very early I930s were the high-water mark for congressional antipathy to commercial broadcasting; despite the strength of the radio lobby, one reformer estimated that fully 70 percent of the Senate and 80 percent of the House of Representatives favored broadcast reform. The NAB put the figure at closer to 90 percent for both branches of Congress. Unfortunately for the reformers, however, the radio lobby had the universal backing of the relevant committee chairmen, who were able to keep reform legislation from ever getting to the floor for a vote. "If it were not for a little group of reactionary leaders in both branches of Congress," the chief labor radio lobbyist observed, reform "legislation would have been passed."

p215

A primary barrier for the NCER was its inability to get press coverage. Most Americans were unaware that it was even within their province, or that of Congress, to determine what type of broadcasting system the United States should have. In a dramatic move to bring the issue before the public, the NCER used its influence to have radio adopted as the official debate topic for U.S. high schools and colleges in the I933-34 academic year. The question of whether the United States should adopt the British system of broadcasting was debated by some fifteen hundred colleges and six thousand high schools in thirty-three states. Two and a half million Americans would be exposed to the debate. "The debates will arouse an enormous amount of interest in the radio problem and will bring home the nature of this problem to millions of people who have so far given it very little thought," enthused one Payne Fund official. The commercial broadcasters were terrified by the debates.

Rich Media, Poor Democracy

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