(2 of 5)
With hundreds of stations all on the same frequency, radio sets from one end of the country to the other began to squeak & squawk with interference. Secretary Herbert Hoover called a conference of all radio interests, and a definite broadcasting band was set aside. This solution was only temporary. Stations grew steadily in number and power until all wave lengths were occupied. The Department of Commerce thereupon declined to issue any more licenses. A 1926 Federal court decision threw the whole situation into chaos again by ruling that the law did not authorize Secretary Hoover to make individual wave length assignments, that stations were free to pick their own wave lengths, to wander at will through the frequencies. More than 200 stations jumped into the air in less than a year, mingled their random signals with the howls of heterodynes, raised bedlam that once more provoked a storm of pained and angry protest from listeners.
Next year Congress passed the 1927 Radio Act, created the Federal Radio Commission to regulate the industry "for the public convenience, interest or necessity." Thus was established the principle that private ownership and operation of a radio station is a Government granted privilege and the FRC (from which in 1934 the Federal Communications Commission inherited its powers) became the dispenser of the privilege. The law now allows maximum three year licenses. The Commission makes them subject to a renewal petition by the broadcaster every six months. Last year, with Republican Senator White of Maine and others baying that a sharp political odor was arising from the FCC, President Roosevelt—to whom radio means a lot—sent over his acute and large-eared little trouble shooter, 65-year-old Frank Ramsay McNinch, to be the Commission's chairman.
Chairman McNinch comes from Charlotte, N. C., a thriving city of which he was twice mayor. A small but fearless Presbyterian Elder, in 1918 he armed a number of citizens as special police officers during a bloody streetcar strike, survived a recall vote that followed the disorders and picked up a local reputation for political effectiveness. In 1928 he jumped the Democratic Party to work for Mr. Hoover. Mr. McNinch is against liquor (he keeps a vacuum jug of milk on his desk) and Mr. Al Smith is not. President Hoover rewarded Frank McNinch with a seat on the Federal Power Commission.
There he immediately took a sharply regulatory attitude and by more than one opinion established himself, to the dismay of his Republican sponsor, as a New Dealer before the New Deal began. Power Commissioner McNinch attacked holding companies two years before the Roosevelt Public Utility Act of 1935.
"Keep Democratic!" Within the first few months of his FCC chairmanship, Mr. McNinch served notice on lobbyists that their visits and pleadings to Commissioners would receive the fullest publicity. He brought the Commission up to date on its hearings, eliminated departmental divisions, which caused the dismissal of a friend of Jim Farley, a relative of Justice Black and the nephew of Sam Rayburn. The little man, it was agreed, had lots of political nerve.