Foot Forward

When an industry wants to put its best foot forward, it is likely to hire a man with a knack for public relations. This man the newspapers will refer to as TSAR. Prime examples: the cinema industry's Hays, baseball's Landis.

A few months ago Frank McNinch of the Federal Communications Commission suggested that he might soon start to investigate radio. Last week, as embarrassingly intimate questionnaires on financial matters began to arrive at every radio station in the land, the National Association of Broadcasters picked a man named Mark Foster Ethridge as president. But despite the inevitable newspaper headlines, no Tsar is Mark Ethridge. He is general manager of the Bingham papers in Louisville--the Courier-Journal and the Times--and he will spend more time in Louisville than he will in Washington. He took pains to make it clear last week that the N. A. B. will continue to be a trade association and nothing else. The radio industry is afflicted with various forms of static--incredibly complicated radio unions are fermenting, musicians, competing with canned music, are sullen, composers are at odds about patents--but Mr. Ethridge's chief duty will be using his charming Southern accent to reason Mr. McNinch away from some of his notions. Reports that he was going to censor all radio material to prevent such celebrated slips as the affair Mae West, he implied, were ridiculous. He will take no salary. When Radio really finds a Tsar, he will gracefully step aside.

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