Dissenter Durr

For eight years after the Civil War, the Judkinses would have no truck with the Union. They spent those eight years in Brazil. Many a U.S. broadcaster wishes they had stayed there.

The cause of this anti-Judkins feeling is FCCommissioner Clifford Judkins Durr. He fathered the recent FCC report on radio's behavior (TIME, March 18), insisting that radio's business was FCC's business. He has continually demanded better programming--more public service, fewer commercials--and opposed the purchase of stations by corporations with no knowledge of radio. He dissents so often from his fellow commissioners' decisions that it is big news when he votes "yes."

Many broadcasters view Cliff Durr as an alarming threat to free radio, a harbinger of Government ownership. His background only partially qualifies him as a socialist reformer. Born to an aristocratic Alabama family, he won a Rhodes scholarship in 1920, earned his degree in jurisprudence and his "blue" (letter) in rugby at Oxford. Back in Alabama, he became a corporation attorney, married Justice Hugo Black's sister-in-law. Some time after joining RFC's legal division, he tied with a colleague in a stenographers' vote for the "biggest hayseed" on the staff. He was a director of the Defense Plant Corp. when Franklin Roosevelt named him to FCC in October 1941, soon became the listening audience's champion in Washington.

Gangling, soft-spoken Clifford Durr believes that Herbert Hoover had the right idea: "The ether is a public medium, and its use must be for public benefit. The use of radio channels is justified only if there is a public benefit. . . ."

Since broadcasters lease but do not own radio channels, Durr insists that they should submit to a periodic review of programming before their three-year licenses are renewed. He also holds that the widest ownership of stations will guarantee the widest diversity of broadcasts. Last week, largely because of his stumping, FCC decided to hold 90 FM channels open for a year, to give returning servicemen a chance to bid for them.

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