Master Radioman

The wall map was dotted with red, blue and white-crossed blue pins. Each represented a U.S. television, FM, or educational radio station. A short, wiry young man looked at the map, remarked: "A lot has happened in the past five years, and a lot more will happen in the next five." The speaker was Charles Ruthven Denny Jr., 34, whom President Truman named last week as chairman of the seven-man Federal Communications Commission.

Denny, high-strung and high-powered is no novice in the job. He has been acting chairman for the past ten months. He had been a commissioner before that, and FCC counsel also. And he has definite ideas about radio's place and purpose. He voiced some of them last winter when he helped to write FCC's now-famous "Blue Book," which demanded that radio serve the public first, advertisers second--or stop broadcasting. Despite the storm the "Blue Book" raised, Denny stands by it. He told broadcasters at their Chicago convention last October, "We will not bleach it."

But he sees FCC's relations with the radio industry as definitely a two-way street. Said he last week: "Our whole effort is to try to have an intelligent working relationship with the industry. In Broadcasting, in particular, we are 'engaged in building two things of tremendous importance--FM and television, and if the job is to be done right, we've got to join together. There's no time for name-calling and bickering. In the main, our objectives coincide. . . .

"The FCC, by all its policies and thinking, points in the direction of the freest possible use of radio for the purpose of keeping the public fully informed on both sides of all questions.

"Radio definitely has that responsibility --just as it has the responsibility for good entertainment."

Hard-working Charles Denny puts in a full day at his office, takes home a briefcase of work, cannot get away from radio even when at play. A favorite diversion: to tinker at home with his AM, FM, shortwave and television sets.

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