Tony Benn Quotes
Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters and somehow we must find some new way of using radio and television to allow us to talk to each other.
formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate
Tony Benn, Minister of Technology and Member of British Parliament (Labour), Speech, Bristol, October 18, 1968
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is an incredible quotation by the American political standards of the 21st century. Coolidge was President and the conservative wing of the Republican Party controlled Congress. There were thousands of radio stations operating. The small commercial and amateur, and community radio stations were thriving but they could only afford small transmitters that only reached the local area. The large commercial radio stations wanted by be able to broadcast to the entire country (see {641989})and could afford huge transmitters but if a local station was on the same frequency the small station would dominate in the local area and not the large stations. The large corporations then lobbied the Federal Radio Commission and the Congress and this policy was adopted. Thousands of small radio stations were kicked off the airwaves so that the large corporate stations could have “clear channels” across the country. It turned out that the small entities did not have equal rights and it was a blatant Federal handover to the large corporations. (See {641992}).)Small stations were only able to broadcast with the advent of FM which only became economically feasible in the late 1940s although FM was patented in 1933.
Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. A member of the Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament for Bristol South East and Chesterfield for 47 of the 51 years between 1950 and 2001. He later served as President of the Stop the War Coalition from 2001 to 2014.
