What People Hear

Sandwiched neatly between winter boom and summer slump of sponsored radio, the week of March 6 was chosen by the Federal Communications Commission's statisticians as typical for their first large-scale survey of what was coming over the air. Reports from 633 stations, released last week, revealed the percentage of broad casting time given to the seven major types of radio programs. One item surprised listeners.

Religious and devotional programs, gen erally considered more a public service than a commercial aspect of radio, were given proportionately more time by commercial sponsors than by the stations as sustainers. Sponsors bought 34.55% of radio's total time, of that gave 5.75% to religion. Religious programs ran only 4.8% of total sustaining time (5.15% of total broadcasting time).

Percentages of total time devoted to the other six types of program :

Music 52.45%

Talks and Dialogue 11.41%

Dramatic 9.11%

Variety 8.84%

News 8.55%

Special Events 2.21%

Miscellaneous 2.28%

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