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The Politics of American Broadcasting: Public Purposes and Private Interests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Robert J. Williams
Robert J. Williams
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

Public regulation of broadcasting in the United States effectively began during the First World War. The history of such regulation, from its beginning to the present, is essentially a catalogue of governmental attempts to keep pace with extremely rapid technological and commercial developments. Thus the regulation of broadcasting should be viewed more as a series of empirical adjustments to changing circumstances and conditions than as expressing a coherent philosophy or theory of administration. But, in their attempts to deal pragmatically with abuses in the broadcasting industry, regulators found themselves evolving principles and standards which served to define and clarify the relationship between the government and the broadcasting interests. The purpose of this paper is to examine this relationship and to account for the gulf which has developed between the ‘ theory ’ and the practice of broadcast regulation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , December 1976 , pp. 329 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 The classic work in this field is Bernstein, M. H., Regulating Business by Independent Commission (Princeton U.P., 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a detailed critique of Bernstein's position see my article ‘Politics and the Ecology of Regulation’, Public Administration (Autumn, 1976)Google Scholar.

2 Public Law, No. 264, 62nd Congress, 1912.

3 Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, quoted by Barnouw, E., A Tower in Babel (vol. 1 of a History of Broadcasting in the United States (Oxford U.P., 1966), p. 53Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 53.

5 Government Control of Radio Communications, House of Representatives hearings, 65th Congress, 3rd Sess., 1918, p. 11.

6 Radio Broadcast, May 1922; selected extracts contained in The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, (Hollis and Carter, 1952), pp. 139–48Google Scholar.

7 Quoted in Emery, W. B., Broadcasting and Government (Michigan U.P., 1971), p. 29Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., p. 29.

9 Hoover v. Intercity Radio Inc., 286 Fed. 1003 (1923). United States v. Zenith Radio Corporation, 12 Fed. (2nd) 616 (1926).

10 Herring, E. P., Public Administration and the Public Interest (McGraw Hill, 1936), p. 160Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 160.

12 Communications Act, 1934, s. 303.

13 Ibid., s. 326.

14 FCC v. Carroll Broadcasting Company, 258 F.2nd 440 (D.C. Cir. 1958).

15 Irion, H. G., former Chief Hearing Examiner of the FCC, ‘Criteria for Evaluating Competing Applicants’, Minnesota Law Review, 43 (1959), 480Google Scholar.

16 Minow, N., Equal Time; the Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest (Atheneum, 1964), p. 55Google Scholar.

17 Cary, W., Politics and the Regulatory Agencies (McGraw Hill, 1967), p. 53Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 47.

19 Wilson, J. Q., ‘The Dead Hand of Regulation’, The Public Interest, 25 (1971), p. 47Google Scholar.

20 A version of this paper was presented at a Conference on American Politics in the University of Essex in January 1976.