FredLeonard said:
Goat Radio Cowboy: Sorry but page 77 is one of the omitted pages. Maybe you could paraphrase the point you saw (paraphrasing is allowed).
Sustaining time was a misunderstood concept under the terms of network affiliation agreements which the FCC ruled against. Networks had blocks of time which were called "network option time."
No, no, no. Totally different topic!!!
In the 50s and going back sometime before that, Individual, local stations, whether NAB members or not, could choose to adopt the NAB Code of Ethics if they chose to. The advertising of hard liquor was one of the components. Granting sustaining time to religious organizations or selling time for religious broadcasts was a provision of "the Code". You could be a network affiliate or you could be a totally independent station. This provision that I am describing had NOTHING to do with "network option time" or "sustaining" programs from the network.
Here was the leverage. There was this explosion of stations following WW II. There are a lot of "off Main Street" independent stations new to the scene. When it was time to apply for your CP, or time to renew your license, you could spend a lot of money on lawyers and kill a lot of trees with lengthy explanations on how you would properly balance community needs, including the broadcasting of religion.... or you could simply put on your application: "We have adopted and will adhere to the NAB Code of Ethics regarding time for religious institutions and other public service issues." And prior to 1960 if you took that route, that language meant your station would abstain from liquor advertising, and you would abstain from selling religious time.... unless it was from some national group who had their own code of ethics that the NAB and the FCC smiled upon. Orf to a local congregation if they were members of the local "Ministerial Association". My memory is that "The Lutheran Hour" met somebody's code of ethics. A religious organization would play this game by demonstrating their worthiness for broadcast time, paid or unpaid, because they were members in good standing with maybe the Federal Council of Churches as it was called in earlier years.
The American Society and American broadcasting wrapped themselves in the "cultural skirt" of various organizations in that era. A trade association could get away with standards and rules that Congress and Federal agencies could not get away with.
By the late 1960s I was managing a "commercial religious station". We were a fore-runner to today's surging tide of religious stations. When I would run into other broadcasters who were still living in "the culture of the 1950s" they would look at me and ask: "How do you guys get away with that? How do you sleep at night?" (I sold some time to some people who didn't belong to anybody's Code-of-Ethics. Some did, had rock solid religious organizations.) It was the arrival of this new category of stations.... the commercial religious station... that made it possible for some of the early political paid-time broadcasters to find a station that would sell them time. I look upon what we were doing in the 1960s as the pioneers who blazed the trail that made it possible for Talk Radio as we know it today to come into existence. We let 'the genie out of the bottle". When I see the result today, I would gladly be a volunteer to see if there is some way we could herd the genie back into the bottle. ;D
Remember, we are talking about the era of "Fair Trade Pricing" at retail. We are talking about the era when if the Chevy dealer in my town started spending some of his advertising money on the new start-up daytimer over in the next county, they Chevy dealer over in the daytimer's market could call Chevrolet and in a matter of hours, Chevy would be on the phone to the dealer in my town advising: "Cut out the cross-market stuff, or we will yank your franchise. And while we are going through the process if you fight us, the only deliveries of new cars you are going to get will be painted orange and yellow."
There are a lot of people, young and old, who sometimes wish we could go back to "The Good Old Days". There were some things that weren't all that good when you really think about it.
WalMart could not have been invented or created back in the 50s. There was too much merchandise that had to be priced at retail at whatever price the manufacturer said it should be priced. Why would you walk away from the downtown merchant you went to high school with and drive out to the edge of town and buy the same thing from this Sam Walton guy that you didn't know... and was from out of town... if the price was the same? Look up the history of the Fair Trade Laws.
