might be reached only by print media and brief actualities included in a radio or television station's regular newscasts.

(Our) assessment is that the name of the game is not just coverage in and of itself, even if it's statewide. It's the effectiveness of the achieved coverage that's going to be the payoff-the impression it makes on the public consciousness. (Extended live and delayed) radio coverage of public issues can create the kind of strong impressions about those issues that help the public make an informed, intelligent choice.

And, too, we have become an awfully mobile society. As such, people just don't take the time to read as much as they should. But radio can be listened to, and paid attention to, while they're doing something else; and it can be taken along-in a car, in a shirt pocket, everywhere: mobile coverage for a mobile society. And it can be highly effective.

Beyond the rhetoric however, there was the reality of available funds for such a project: the constitutional convention was unable to commit funds at the level required for this proposal. But it was able to lend us assistance for our own local coverage of convention proceedings. This has included gavel-to-gavel broadcasts of the floor debate and action, plus tape delay coverage-in extended summary and sometimes in full-of the eight substantive committees established by the convention.

Our convention coverage was enhanced further by a joint grant from the Texas Committee for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. These funds, provided on the basis of a 50-50 match, have enabled us to provide a very special kind of coverage.

Each Sunday evening, a seven-member panel gathers in the KUTFM studio to discuss the work of the constitutional convention as carried out during the preceding week. The composition of the panel may change from week to week, but all of the members are expert in Texas Constitutional History or in State government operations. The discussion goes on for about an hour. Then, for the remaining hour, the public is invited to participate by calling in to the broadcast studio to talk, live and on-the-air, to the panel members: to respond to specific points raised during the preceding hour's discussion, to request clarification or amplification of points at issue, or to suggest further points of view.

This particular program idea is not an original one, nor is it newbut it is exceptionally effective. It gains public involvement, and it opens up an immediate two-way channel of communication.

In my view, a national extrapolation of this idea, applied to congressional access to the people-and vice versa-is not only possible; it is one which merits serious investigation. Again in my view, this possibility should be fully explored with National Public Radio, which which already has gained experience in precisely this kind of program structure in its past cooperative, cross-national efforts with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

If you like, I'd be glad at some future point to give the committee a personal assessment of the possibilities available for a program structure and series of this kind.

Now, I would like to move farther from home, to give you some sense of my perceptions of the Australian system of parliamentary broadcasting.

In 1946, the Parliamentary Proceedings Broadcasting Act established that the Government, through its public broadcasting agency, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, would provide for national

radio broadcast coverage of parliamentary floor debate and action. No specific mention has been made of television coverage subsequent to that time, but a study is being carried out now to investigate the feasi bility and advisability of admitting television cameras to the House and Senate Chambers. Further, no specific mention has been made of coverage of committees, because until the past 5 years or so, the Australian Parliament had not employed a substantive committee system to help accomplish its work. This is now under gradual change, particularly in the Australian Senate, and informed opinion is that the Broadcasting Act will soon need to be amended to provide for coverage of the committees as they are brought into greater use.

The act also established that the broadcasts would be governed by a Joint Standing Committee of Parliament, and would be composed of an equal number of Members from both Houses and, among those, an equal number would be from the two major political parties. One of the committee's chief functions is to insure equal coverage for the Government and the opposition in whatever material is broadcast. The act then goes on to specify which of the Australian Broadcasting Commission's radio network stations will carry the broadcasts. There are two separate public radio networks in Australia-and soon there will be a third; and I might add, again parenthetically, that this is in a country the size of the United States, but whose population is just about the size of that in Texas. In any case, the act specifies that the stations which will broadcast Parliament are those belonging to the first network, which provides a basic service of news, sports, light entertainment, school broadcasts for instruction, and, when it is in session, Parliament.

The last major area which the act addresses is an "equal time" provision for both Houses of Parliament. This is accomplished by the simple but sometimes disconcerting expedient of alternating the days of broadcasting. By common practice, the broadcasts begin with the House on the first day of each new parliamentary session; on the following day, the Senate is broadcast; then, back again to the House on the next day; and so on, straight through the session. The problem is, for instance, that a critically important debate in the House may be halted somewhere in the middle, to permit the House to recess for the remainder of the day. But when that happens, you don't get a chance to hear a broadcast of the conclusion because, the next day, it's the Senate's turn. It's very much like watching a television special which is split between two evenings and you're able to watch the first night, but not the conclusion on the second.

By rule of the Joint Standing Committee, the Australian Broadcasting Commission's personnel who anchor these broadcasts are announcers, as opposed to being news or public affairs specialists. Their only function is to open and close the broadcasts, and to provide some occasional additional, but carefully circumscribed, brief comment.

For instance, by rule not by statute, the announcers may report whether or not there is a quorum present for the conduct of business; but they may not comment on the number of Members who actually are present.

Another example of permitted announcer comment is an announcement of a particular subject for debate and who the first speaker will be. And if it is a particularly lengthy debate with delivery of substantial individual speeches, the rules permit the announcer to break in at

established intervals with a reminder of who the speaker is and what the subject of debate is--but nothing further.

The belief is that, by being conducted in a circumscribed and decorous fashion, the broadcasts benefit the House and Senate in their separate and joint institutional roles; and thus they are not permitted to become vehicles for possible personal exploitation by individual Members or select groups of Members. On the other hand, the broadcasts do guarantee the Members of each representative body the opportunity to have their remarks heard complete and in context--and further, the broadcasts provide as accurate an account of the proceedings as the listener is likely to get, short of actually being there.

During the time of my own association with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, the first network broadcast a total of some 520 hours of parliamentary proceedings. To put that figure in somewhat better perspective, it amounted to just about 312 percent of the total program time available for that year on Australian public radio. And considering that such broadcasts do not gain a very high percentage of total audience, this probably was not too far out of line. The Australian Broadcasting Commission's audience research division puts the average share of audience for these broadcasts at about 1 to 2 percent. However, they do note that this figure rises steeply and substantially at times of critical debate on the budget, taxation, abortion, or drug law reform, or on any number of other politically and socially sensitive issues.

But when it's all said and done, the typical Australian view is that, for them, the merit of such broadcasts is not essentially one of providing a means for the Parliament to speak in some direct fashion to the people however important that is. Rather, they take a less pragmatic, more long range, philosophic view: that such broadcasts are valuable as part of a continuing educative process, a recognition that people don't have a very clearcut idea of how the whole process of representative government works. Such broadcasts, they believe, rather than losing the people in a confusing background of detail and procedure, help them to find out what's going on, and to see the issues and ideas of the day in high relief.

Moreover, as one Australian expressed it to me recently: Each citizen has a right to know-not only what his elected representatives are doing, but equally important, how they go about doing it. And here is a further point that was made: It is not a matter of numbers— how many people are listening-the point is that the broadcasts do exist, and are there for every citizen to take advantage of, for exercise of his right to know--if he so chooses.

In closing, I offer a personal comment that is an echo of that particular Australian's point of view:

If, in a general sense, the institution called public broadcasting can be said to be the people's business, then surely it would be never more specifically so than when it would publicly broadcast the institution of Congress in full command and conduct of the people's business.

To the degree that people understand what Congress does and how it does it, people will tend to the same degree to feel comfortable with the actions of Congress and with its Members--and trust and confidence in the institution and persons of Congress can then return and flourish.

Chairman METCALF. Thank you very much for your statement and your participation this afternoon.

I wonder if this business of requiring by statute alternation from day to day does not point up some of the admonitions we have had already, shouldn't we avoid such rules and requirements, and leave it up to the individual?

Mr. GIORDA. I think you are absolutely right. Of course, the Aus tralians carry their business of requiring things a little too far sometimes. They do have a legal requirement that you are not just permitted.

to vote.

You are required to vote, and you are fined if you do not.

Chairman METCALF. I think that should apply to all Democrats. But I would not want to require all of the Republicans to vote. Mr. Cleveland?

Representative CLEVELAND. I have no questions.

Chairman METCALF. Congressman Dellenback?

Representative DELLENRACK. Mr. Chairman, I am grateful to the witnesses who just testified, who have stayed with us until the afternoon. I am tempted to ask a whole series of questions but because of the hour I wonder if it would not be permissible for us to submit written questions?

Chairman METCALF. Would you mind if we submitted some written questions?

We are running about an hour behind.

Mr. GIORDA. If I may submit at a later date for the record, there is a study by Mr. A. R. Browning of Parliamentary Broadcasts from 1946-1968. I have arranged to secure a copy for your study.

[Copy of above-mentioned study by A. R. Browning appears in the Appendix on p. 474.]

Chairman METCALF. We would be pleased to have it. If it is not too voluminous, we will incorporate it in the record. If it is overly long, the staff will use excerpts.

Would all of you be willing to permit us to submit written questions to you?

Other members of the committee will read the transcript, and they may also want to submit questions. This is not only a hearing for the benefit of the members of the committee, but a hearing for the benefit of all of the Members of Congress who are interested and concerned in this subject matter. You have been very helpful.

Thank you very much. I applaud all of you for appearing.

Representative DELLENBACK. Mr. Chairman, it is our understanding that we have other witnesses who want to catch a plane. Chairman METCALF. That is correct.

Gentlemen, we thank you very much.

Mr. FRISCHKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman METCALF. We will now hear from the Connecticut delegation; that is, Mr. Rome, Mr. Taff, and Mr. Yocom.

SENATOR LEWIS B. ROME, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER,
CONNECTICUT GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Lewis B. Rome, 40, a Republican from Bloomfield, Connecticut was elected to the Connecticut State Senate in 1970 and currently serves as the Senate Majority Leader. He has served on the Senate Committees on the Judiciary, Transportation, Banking, Insurance, Judiciary Study, and Legislative Program Review and

Evaluation. Mr. Rome formerly was a City Councilman in Bloomfield and was that city's Mayor from 1965 to 1969. He is a trustee of Connecticut Public Television, a director of the Coordinating Council for Foundations, Incorporated, and an advisor to the Office of Economic Opportunities.

PAUL K. TAFF, PRESIDENT, CONNECTICUT EDUCATIONAL

TELEVISION CORP.

Paul K. Taff, president and general manager of the Connecticut Educational Television Corporation, has been working in the field of educational television for 14 years. From 1960 to 1970, he worked with National Educational Television as Director of Program Operations and as Director of Children's Programs. Mr. Taff was a member of the group which planned the children's program "Sesame Street" and remains active in the area of programing for children. He has worked as program director and manager of radio and television stations in Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis and Decatur, Illinois. He is a graduate of the Northwestern University Graduate School of Journalism.

S. ANDERS YOCOM, JR., VICE PRESIDENT, CONNECTICUT

EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION CORP.

S. Anders Yocom, Jr., 33, is the vice president and program manager of the Connecticut Educational Television Corporation. Since joining CETC in 1962, he has worked as a production manager, producer-director, production assistant and cameraman. He is a graduate of Trinity College.

STATEMENT OF LEWIS B. ROME, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER, CONNECTICUT GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Senator ROME. I will start off by saying that it hardly lies in my mouth to shut off the media from participation in our proceedings, in Connecticut, and I suggest you might learn from our experience.

I think I owe my particular position to the news media in Connecticut, not because I am an orator, but because of what my predecessors in office in 1971 did in the presence of the television camera, and I think that is very important.

I as a reform legislator, when we had the opportunity to take over from our predecessors a year and a half ago, we determined that we were going to make major procedural reforms, on the theory that substance follows procedure.

We do permit as a matter of fact, we encourage the television cameras to be in our presence any time they wish to be in our presence, but in recognition of how we got there, we have set some new procedural standards for ourselves, so that when that window is open, we are performing in a reasonable way.

For the first time in history, the Connecticut General Assembly has set our hearing dates, and our dates of activity on the floor of the senate on separate days.

I had hoped sometime that Congress could consider a period of the year, a substantial period of the year when Congress would not be in session for session debate, but would have scheduled hearings, even scheduled by computer so that all of the Members could be in attendance at every hearing that you have.

The advantage of that in Connecticut has been simply that when the news media is at our session, either in hearing or in our regular session on the floor of the senate, they are hearing meaningful debate from all of us, and in fact, the public is hearing and, seeing us with our very best foot forward.