unlawful to intercept and use the message. It is a very difficult one to police, the Commission has issued public notices designed to discourage it. It becomes largely a local problem, as you have recognized.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. It would probably then be up to my city if people can buy this little gadget, to say you cannot buy this anymore. Mr. HYDE. No, they can buy the equipment, it is just the intercepting and use that violates the law.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. In other words, it should be handled locally as to the purchase of a piece of equipment.

Mr. HYDE. It has been suggested here possibly an ordinance designed to prevent the congregating of wrecking crews and whatnot. I think there are ways to deal with it. There is a Federal statute designed to assess penalties for interception, unauthorized interception and use of the signal. We have warned the stations against the practice. Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman."

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Van Deerlin.

Mr. VAN DEERLIN. Mr. Chairman, is the Commission happy with the manner in which returns are broadcast in our national elections?

Mr. HYDE. I would have to say that there are views and views about it. We have heard of the discussion of the election projections based upon early returns. Our general posture on this is that it is a matter that if it should be regulated at all, it should be done in terms of voting regulations rather than in restrictions on what the broadcaster might do.

Mr. VAN DEERLIN. What do you have in mind?

Mr. HYDE. Well, for instance, a 24-hour election day or an arrangement so that no returns would be reported until all the voting had been completed.

Mr. VAN DEERLIN. One way to get at this, of course, would be to prohibit the broadcast of premature returns.

Mr. HYDE. This would put us in the business of suppressing information, and if it can be handled by some other method, I would hope that other method would be used. We always get into very doubtful grounds when you tend to prohibit the information otherwise available from being transmitted.

Mr. VAN DEERLIN. I would gather that anything in this direction ought to be undertaken by Congress.

Mr. HYDE. We would strongly recommend that. We would.
Mr. VAN DEERLIN. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brown.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Chairman, I wonder if you could explain to me what the situation is currently or what the problem is currently with the citizens band radio?

Mr. HYDE. We are having great difficulty in maintaining respect for rules and licensees. Many of the equipments sold have had inherent capacity to operate for the higher power. Many of them provide transmission on bands not available for citizens band. There has been a tendency for many operators to use them for purely hobby purposes at the expense of impairing the usefulness of the channels for communication service as such.

We had the question come up before us as to whether we should abandon the effort to regulate it as a communications service or to

just throw it and permit to be used as a toy, as a novelty. We have made the basic policy decision to try and bring some order in the field. We have invited the manufacturers in for a conference who make the gear to try to get their support in such a program for the purpose of promoting their interest.

I suggested to them that if we are going to continue to license them, that we must have some sense of responsibility.

Mr. BROWN. Apparent flexibility of the equipment, I gather, is something over which the manufacturer has control, as you suggested in your prepared remarks, but in appropriate use does not the FCC have control of that through licensing?

Mr. HYDE. We have legal control, but as a practical matter we have had an inadequate force to police it.

Mr. BROWN. My question really is: Is it even possible to have an adequate force to police it?

Mr. HYDE. I think there are a number of matters that might make it possible to bring some order into the field. We are going into approval of equipment. We could consider, we could stiffen up the requirements as to eligibility. We could require a better showing by applicants. For instance, we have no trouble as to breakdown of law in the service by an amateur, but an amateur when he is examined must show some knowledge of the theory of radio transmission and reception and he must know the code, 12 words a minute I think it is-I am corrected, 13, not 12—in this service. There are upwards of 200,000 of them.

Mr. BROWN. I guess my real question is, Is this the fault of the average CB license holder or is this the fault of the Commission that it is not spelled out clearly what his limitations are?

Mr. HYDE. I think our rules spell it out clearly enough, but I am not sure the merchandisers selling the gear for that have been as familiar with that as we have been. It may well be that many a purchaser has not been aware of the conditions under which he could legally use it. Mr. BROWN. If I could switch and get into the other area, I want to ask one question. How do you determine what is editorializing or personal attack? For instance, is it editorializing when a station says that it has "basic doubts which lead to a limited disagreement with a respected candidate," or is it editorializing when the station says that it "even concurs on an issue with a perennial candidate who seems to have modified his views on one issue on which practically everybody agrees?”

Mr. HYDE. I am kind of reluctant to pass a judgment on those passages, they may come out of a news account. Sometimes the suggestion is made that editorialization sometimes creeps into news reports.

Mr. BROWN. It is strange that you should raise that issue, but maybe that is what I had in mind. Now where do we draw the line on editorializing?

Mr. HYDE. It is a difficult line. I say if you editorialized when you take a position, and of course to editoralize, understand it should be labeled as such.

Mr. BROWN. By "take a position," does that include eyebrow wiggling and throat-clearing or tone of voice, inflection? What is involved here in taking a position?

Mr. HYDE. I am sure that a position can be conveyed by such

measures.

77-336-67 -41

Mr. BROWN. Other than by the language, the English language, the semantics of what is said?

Mr. HYDE. Yes, even by a smile or a sneer, whatever. Certainly there are methods of conveying a message which might require a little discernment into our analysis to identify.

Mr. BROWN. Is there any practical way for the FCC to control this? Mr. HYDE. There is no practical way for us to pass upon the question as to whether all the material-well, let me put it this way. There is no practical way where we can offer an anlysis service which would in every instance classify as editorialization, news or whatever it might be; no. It would not be feasible for us to perform that service. We are obliged in instances of complaint to pass upon a question.

Mr. BROWN. Would you care to comment on the relative effectiveness to the viewer of one of these teleprompter-written editorials that is being read and photographed on the screen versus-which has a very emphatic message in it-versus a comment with a sneer or a smile or a wiggle of the eyebrow by a popular newscaster when he refers to a candidate or a candidate's position?

Mr. HYDE. Please just let me off by just saying I recognize there is a difference.

Mr. MACDONALD. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BROWN. You would not care to comment on the effectiveness of the two?

Mr. HYDE. No.

Mr. MACDONALD. Will you yield?

Mr. BROWN. Yes.

Mr. MACDONALD. In a much simpler case special services to the good of the community we serve, the following is an editorial, that is perfectly clear.

Mr. HYDE. No problem there.

Mr. MACDONALD. But what about this not lifting an eyebrow or smiling or anything else. They suddenly turn on a national broadcast to a man who does nothing but editorialize. There is one on every night on a well-known news broadcast, and he is a very bright, capable man, but certainly he editorializes completely; that is all he does. Eric Sevareid is who I have in mind. You can disagree with him or agree with him, but what he does is editorialize and it is so stated. Now what is the Commission's view on that?

Mr. HYDE. Isn't it classified as commentary or analysis?

Mr. MACDONALD. No, he is on a news program, and Walter Cronkite reads the news that comes off the ticker and then he turns and says, "Now to Eric," and Eric says, "Thank you." And then will interpret the news that perhaps you have just read or heard. Isn't that editorializing clear and simple?

Mr. HYDE. It is unusally classified as commentary, interpretation. Mr. MACDONALD. I am just asking: Does the Commission have a position?

Mr. HYDE. No, the Commission has not classified this as an editorialization, but it is a matter of subjective judgment to every man who listens or observes the program.

Mr. MACDONALD. Isn't that your view?

Mr. HYDE. I believe not.

Mr. MACDONALD. It is not your duty to say whether or not that is an editorial?

Mr. HYDE. If there were a complaint that he had handled an issue unfairly, we might be called upon to determine whether or not they should have offered an opportunity to a proponent of another viewpoint to meet it. This could come up.

Mr. MACDONALD. Thank you.

Mr. BROWN. I think the time is mine.

Mr. MACDONALD. I though your time had expired.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Loevinger raised the question of diversity as protection against both Federal control in this area and improper use by the medium-radio, television, network, the individual, whatever. I would like to ask Mr. Loevinger if he has any comment on how diversity can be encouraged as a protection in this area?

Mr. LOEVINGER. I think that we are doing a lot better job than we are generally given credit for. As a matter of fact, the diversity available through news reporting and editorializing by means of broadcasting is now in the order of three or four times the diversity available through newspapers. There are only about half a dozen major cities in the country with competitive newspapers. There is no major city in the country without anywhere from, oh, 10 to 40 or 50 diverse broadcast sources. Almost every community in the country has one or two broadcast sources. There are something on the order of 4,000-plus different owners of broadcast properties in the country, there are I have forgotten precisely-on the order of 12 to 1,400 newspaper owners in the country. There is a far greater diversity of source in broadcasting today than there is in newspapers.

Mr. BROWN. Do you have any idea, with reference to time on the air audience, what the relationship is between network newscasting from relatively few sources and local newscasting by individual local stations origination of the news? Is that too complex a question? Do you know what I am asking? Mr. Johnson is smiling. I think he knows what I am talking about.

Mr. LOEVINGER. In terms of television the three great networks, of course, have most of the evening time and probably have a fair amount of the prime time, news time, although I suspect that a far larger amount than is generally assumed is local. However, what is frequently overlooked is that radio is still an extremely potent medium and that radio is to a very large extent still a news source in this country and in radio there is a tremendous amount of local news broadcasting.

Mr. BROWN. Is it possible to get any figures that relate to this area? Mr. LOEVINGER. I don't thing there are wholly reliable figures as to listenership. There is great dispute as a matter of fact as to listenership, and one of the real problems is measuring the listenership of radio at all.

Mr. BROWN. Well, skip the listenership, which is a rating matter, and get to the outlets. Could we relate to the total number of outlets and the percentage of news content in all their broadcast programing, how much of that total amount of news being broadcast originates locally and how much is network?

Mr. LOEVINGER. A very large amount of radio news originates locally. Very substantially.

Mr. BROWN. Is it possible to get the figures specifically or closer than "very large?"

Mr. LOEVINGER. I will ask. I don't know.

(The information requested follows:)

DIVERSITY OF BROADCAST NEWS SOURCES

(This is a memorandum prepared by Commissioner Lee Loevinger, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, in response to a question asked by Congressman Clarence J. Brown, Jr. at a hearing of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on March 14, 1967.)

The inquiry seeks to ascertain the amount of nationally and locally originated news broadcast by radio and television stations in this country. In order to give a fair and reasonably accurate response to this inquiry, it is necessary to present some background data. It is also essential to report that so far as can be ascertained, there is no single reliable source for such information. In an effort to secure the most complete and reliable data, I have consulted and relied upon the records and staff of the Federal Communications Commission, past issues of Broadcasting and Television magazines (which are generally recognized as reliable trade publications), the staff of those magazines, officials of each of the four networks (ABC, CBS, Mutual and NBC), and officials of the National Association of Broadcasters. It must be recognized that the data themselves change from day to day and from week to week. News broadcasts change both as to length and as to relative amounts of national and locally originated news presented, and even the numbers of stations affiliated with networks change from time to time. However, the data presented here are based upon a subjective weighing and extrapolation of reports from all the sources mentioned above, and, although approximate, are believed to be as accurate and reliable as is possible in the circumstances and as will serve any useful purpose.

In order to appraise the significance of broadcast news sources, it is desirable to have an idea of the number of stations and their dispersion throughout the country. In general, television stations are confined to the metropolitan areas of the United States. There are about 230 standard metropolitan areas in the United States, according to census definitions, and there are approximately 248 television markets. Due to differences in definitions, the television markets do not correspond precisely to the standard metropolitan areas, but demographically the television markets and the metropolitan areas coincide almost entirely. As of March 1967, there are approximately 615 commercial television stations on the air plus approximately 130 educational television stations on the air. Approximately 535 of the commercial television stations are affiliated with one of the three national television networks, the number of affiliates being approximately these: ABC 137; CBS 192; NBC 206. There are also about 45 stations with "secondary" network affiliations, but more than 50 stations are considered as "independent” or not regularly carrying network programs or news. None of the educational television stations is affiliated with a commercial network. At the present time, there is a national educational television network but it lacks interconnecting wire facilities and consequently presents national live news programs only on the rarest occasions. As a practical matter, the non-affiliated commercial television stations and the educational television stations present no significant amount of network originated news.

Television stations are distributed among the television markets as follows: Markets with 4 or more stations__

Markets with 3 stations__.

Markets with 2 stations_.

Markets with 1 station‒‒‒‒

28

76

58

86

Television stations in general operate from 100 to 140 hours a week with an average operation of approximately 118 hours a week. Approximately 60% of the total time of television stations affiliated with the commercial networks is devoted to network programming.

Television stations affiliated with a national television network devote from 5% to 15% of total programming time to news broadcasts. The best average figure that the Federal Communications Commission is able to obtain is that approximately 8.4% of total programming time on television is news. This amounts to approximately 10 hours per week of news. The three major networks each provide aproximately 5 hours per week of news broadcasts which are presumably carried by their affiliated stations. It is, therefore, reliably estimated that approximately 50% of the news broadcasts of affiliated television stations are network originated news and approximately 50% is locally originated news. In this connection, it must be noted that it is often difficult to define precisely