Arizona sun., 1955-08-19

The Federal Communications
Commission has asked for COM
ments by interested parties "tO de-
termine whether the Commission
should amend it's rules and regula-
tions to authorize television sta
tions to transmit programs paid for
directly on a subscription basis"
The CHS position and reasons for
it were made known at Confer
ence of CHS TeleviSion Affiliates
held in New York City, May 19,
1855. The stations, in secret bal
lot voted .107 to 2, endorsing the
CHS position and urged "CBS to
assume leadership for the preser-
vation of the present American sys-
tenn of free home service"
Since this matter is of concern
to every family who owns tele-
vision set, we have reprinted the
statement of DR.. Frank Stanton,
President of Columbia Broadcast
ing System, Inc.
CHS Statement
"CBS opposes pay-television be-
cause it Wvuld highjack the Amer
lean public into paying for the
privilege of looking at its own tele-
vision sets. This is a betrayal of
the "a million families who have
already spent $13A billion for their
sets in the expectation that they
would be able to use them as much
as they wanted without paying for
the prerogative of watching.
Under pay-television, stations
which are now broadcaSting free
programs would scramble the pic
lures and sound So that the set
owner could not receive them un-
less he paid for each program. Such
programs could be unscrambled
only when a costly gadget, at
tached to the home receiver, is fed
"a coin or slug, key or card for
which the viewer pays. Since
station cannCt televise two pro-
grams at once, any station broad
casting a scrambled pay program
would necessarily have to elimi-
nate its free program during that
time period. Pay-televiSion would
back out the best of free television.
In essence, this is BOBBY trap, a
scheme to render the telvision
owner blind, and then rent him
seeing eye dog at so much per
mile-tO restore to him, only very
partially, what he had previously
enjoyed as natural right.
Huge us. Bill
Pay-teleVision promoters say
they would be satisfied if they got
$100 a year from the average fam
lily. On this basis, today's television
audience would pay some $31A
billion a year-more than it pays
for shoes or doctors or electricity
for viewing far fewer programs
than it NV watches without charge.
This is three times the amount now
being paid by the public for all
spectator admissions.
Under the present system of
American televiSion, no set owner
is deprived of program because
he is not as prosperous as his
neighbor. But, once the turnStile
of pay-televiSion is placed in the
living room, the families who rely
most on television for their enter
tainment and information would
be hit the hardest because they
Wuld be the ones who, for eco
nomic reasons, would have to re-,
strict their viewing most severity
TeleviSion would no longer belong
to all the people all the time.
One of the arguments made by
the promoters of pay-television is
that its introduction would hurt
nobody. Try it out in the market
place, they say. Surely this is in
the American tradition. There
would, they claim, be free tele-
vision for those who want what
they are now getting and there
would be pay-television for those
who want the unusual, the sort of
entertainment and culture which
free television cannot afford cur
rently. But this is a specious claim,