War of the Worlds program(s) et al

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 20:42:20 -0400 (EDT), Ric Werme <ewerme@comcast.net> said:

> IIRC, one of the consequences of the 1938 program was that the FCC
> prohibited the word "bulletin" outside of newscasts.  Wikipedia sort of
> agrees:

[...]

> A news item at
> http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/Radio/Newspapers/Nov07/Heads.html
> suggests there was was at least informal pressure:

>   In announcing the conference, McNinch (FCC person who told the radio
>   networks to attend)

Frank McNinch was the Chairman of the FCC, and a confidant of FDR; you
better believe that when he invited CBS, NBC, and Mutual to a meeting,
they took it as an order.  He resigned in 1939 and was replaced by
James Lawrence "Larry" Fly, who was responsible for the introduction
of the duopoly rule, the national ownership cap, the NTSC, and his
dustups with Congress; Fly was later chairman of the ACLU.

Go to americanradiohistory.com and read through some of the old issues
of /Broadcasting/ from that era -- you will learn an enormous amount
about the politics of the day.

-GAWollman