The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1924-03-21
Four Big Radio Corporations Plan
To Form Super-Trust Ruling Air;
Combine Could Flood Nation With
Anti-Labor Propaganda Of Worst Kind

BY International Labor News Service.
Washington, D. C.-Nearly 600
radio broadcasting stations in the
United States face annihilation at the
hands of a combination of four great
corporations which control practically
all the essential radio patents in the
country. These corporations are
backed by almost unlimited wealth
and through resort to the courts
have begun the process of eliminating
stations not owned by the combine
which apparently has laid it's plans to
form supertrust of the air.
The American Telephone and Tele-
graph Company has already shown
the way in which the combine expects
to operate. To the amazement of
many of the ten million owners of re-
ceiving sets it has become known that
the telephone company charges fixed
fee for the use of Station WEAF, the
king pin of the group of forty sta
tions owned by the four cooperating
corporations. 1t is announced a rate
of $40 per minutes is charged.
Victory of Trust Would Mean
Propaganda Flood
If the radio combine is about to
force independent .broadcasting sta
tiens out of business by virtue of its
control of patents, the way will be
open to such a flood of propaganda
as has never been developed through
any other channel. The spasmodic
efforts to propaganda the motion
picture screen will fade into insignif-
canoe. The newspapers, because of
their character and because of their
accessibility to the readers, have been
under restraint unknown to radio,
besides which the newspaper world
has developed ethical standards which
in themselves have to remarkable
degree restrained all except the most
unscrupulous.
Already the listeners-in on the
nightly programs have been treated
to propaganda lectures of the most
brazen kind and to which there was
no opportunity to make reply of any
kind
Reports of impending amazing de-
velopments both in broadcasting and
receiving lend credence to the re-
ported approach of the radio super
trust and it's control of the air.
Speaking for the newspaper field,
"The Fourth Estate" sounds an alarm
that need by no means be confined to
newspapers, because labor itself is
most vitally interested in the opera
tion and integrity of all agencies of
information dissemination.
Newspapers Warned to Watch
Developments
The Fourth Estate says in part:
"At this juncture it seems relevant
to point out the need on the part of
the newspapers to cautiously watch
radio developments. If the control
of the air, by scientific or legal juris-
diction is to be vested in the hands
of commercial interests without ex-
perience in disseminating news, with
out regard to the public's opinions or
the nations welfare, as has unfortu-
nately often characterized mere cor
porate notifications Of money and
power, it is time for the newspaper
to place a protecting hand about it's
/ own investments"
The four great corporations in
volved in the effort to crowd all inde-
1 pendents out of the air are the Amer
lean Telephone and Telegraph Conn
| pany, the Westinghouse Electric Com
pany, the General Electric Company