Evening star., 1924-03-30
HOOVER GETS WEIRD
RAPS AGAINST RADIO
Fans Flood Commerce Department
Office With Protests Against
Static and Programs.
DECLINES EDITORIAL" JOB
Offers Simple Explanation for
Station Signals.
BY ROBERT Il. SMALL.

Secretary of Commerce Hoover,
emperor of the ether. desires to warn
the radio audience of America once
more that the Department of Com
mrce in its regulation of the roads
in the air cannot and will not at
tempt TO regulate the programs sent
out by broadcasting stations. The
departm ent'S only concern is to see
that there is 20 attempt to suppress
free speech. no attempt to monopoliZc
the wave lengths, and that the air
above the United States shall be as
shores.
1t was stated recently that the Chi
cago office of the Department of Com
merce was being bombarded by the
radio fans. The mails there are
nothing compared to the inflow here
at the head of the government. Some
of the communications come from
abroad. One man down in Havana
has written to Mr.. Hoover bitterly
complaining that he gets nothing but
Protestant sermons from the United
states on Sunday.
Complaints Against Jazz.
There are thousands of complaints
aga inst too much jazz in the musical
programs. too much dance music.
and. as the Germans complain, too
niue or beethoven. Almost as many
protests come in against attempts to
| bore" the invisible audience with
| classical music. One writer said it
was all wrong for Il military band I"
give itself over to a whole reproduc-
tion of the score of Faust" Some
writers complain about the serious
speeches. and others about the friv-
olouS ones. Some complaints even are
leveled against the new gentry Of
the land, the Chesterfieldian announc-
erS.
Protest Against Static.
some of the writer's complain
about static" said Mr.. Hoover. and
all of them complain about inter
ference"
Much of the interference comes. of
course from receiving sets which re-
generate and throw out impulses Of
their own. Mr.. Hoover feels that this
class of interference will be thor
oughly absorbed in time and will no
longer be a source of complaint. He
sees no hope. however. of shutting
off the other complaints which come
! pouring in, even if ne is repeating
the warning that the department is
not responsible for the private pro-
grams, and never, so long as he has
any say in the matter, will offer
any government program of enter
tainment.
Declines to Edit.
For a long time william Jennings
Bryan has been urging that the gov
ernment issue newspaper, and feels
| he has worked out a plan to make
such publication non-partiSan or
at least bipartisan. Mr.. Hoover does
not desire to undertake the work of
editing a government broadca sting
program. So for many months to
come. if not for years. the govern
ment will confine itself to time sig
mails, weather reports and other use
full but inane information.
a great many of the letters re-
ceived at the Department of Com
merce demand to know how in the
name of all that is just and right
the government fixes up such crazy
calls for broadcasting stations. 1t
was claimed that some of the code
words used in the Ned Mclean Palm
Beach kilograms recently unearthed
looked more like the names of broad
casting stations than anything else
in the world. Which was d way of
saying the names seemed crazy to
most of the folks who read them.
HoOver's Explanation.
The explanation offered by Mr.
Hoover is simplicity itself. Blocks
of three and four letter combina-
tions are assigned by international
agreement to certain countries. The
United States has a very wide range
in signals. beginning with w, and
has the KS from kDA to kZZ.
Under this system of lettering il
is possible to tell in moment the
country from which a wireless sig
nal is coming.