Court Opinion

ID: 9636987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:51:36.234845+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:11.900047
License: Public Domain

WILBUR K. MILLER, Associate Justice
(concurring).
I think the order refusing to grant a license to Simmons was properly entered by the Commission, but not for the reason assigned by it and approved by the court. Appellant’s application could and should have been denied because it sought a license for a frequency already in use in the same area by the intervenor under an existing *673license, and no valid reason appeared for depriving the intervenor of that use.
Instead of rejecting Simmons’ application upon that obvious ground, the Commission chose to do so because Simmons had said he proposed, if the license were granted to him, to use almost exclusively the programs of the Columbia Broadcasting System. This would not be in the public interest, the Commission said, and would amount to an abdication of the prospective licensee’s right and power to select the programs for his broadcasts. I consider it, on the contrary, to be an exercise of the right of choice.
Simmons had not bound himself by contract with Columbia to use its programs as extensively as he said he proposed to do. Nothing would prevent him from interrupting that use at will, and interjecting programs of local origin and interest whenever he saw fit, unless the Commission itself should require him to adhere completely to his expressed intention.
Denial of a license because the applicant expects to make large use of the facilities of one of the major broadcasting companies of the country, saying that such use will not be in the public interest, seems an arbitrary and capricious exercise of power not granted by statute, but expressly forbidden by it. It is not a finding based on evidence. Nor is it justified by the claim that in the public interest the Commission may require a balance between national and local material to be maintained by every station. The demands of his listeners, of which a licensee is keenly aware, will require that balance. The idea is especially untenable and groundless when, as in this case, the proposed station is in a metropolitan area already served by some fifteen other stations which devote time to the broadcasting of programs which have only a local interest.
To uphold the Commission’s order because the applicant expressed an intention to make extensive use of Columbia’s programs is to grant to the Commission the power of censorship, which is expressly forbidden by the Act. “Such a power is so abhorrent to our traditions that a purpose to grant it should not be easily inferred.”1 Certainly the power of censorship should not be granted by a court when it has been withheld by the Congress.

 Hannegan, Post Master General v. Esquire, Inc., 1946, 327 U.S. 146, 151, 66 S.Ct. 456, 459, 90 L.Ed. 586.