Broadcast Regulation Quotes
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.
Ball filed this on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. The Republicans had for the first time in political history run a blitz of TV Campaign Commercials which was, to many people, shocking and an infringement on the rights of the general audience. By the time the complaint was heard, both parties were using the new technique and the public has been “blitzed” and “saturated” with politics ever since. But there was a time, 1952, that many people thought of campaign media commercials as oral “spam.”
