Bedside Manner

Last year the radio industry took in more money and boasted more stations than ever before in history. But this look of ruddy health was a sorry illusion. Actually, radio's pulse was irregular and feeble; it was seeing TV spots before its eyes.

A sickroom air hung this week over Chicago's Stevens Hotel as 1,500 radiomen gathered for the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters. Instead of milling happily in & out of hotel suites for three days with drinks in their hands, the delegates sat glumly and listened to disquieting speeches. An NAB veteran said he had never seen so sober a meeting.

Merlin Aylesworth, first president of NBC and now an adman, had just published his own warning that radio was doomed. He predicted that radio, as the U.S. now knows it, will be wiped out by TV within three years. Speaking to the convention in the gilt and glitter of the Stevens' ballroom, FCCommissioner Wayne Coy concurred. "The essential difference between Mr. Aylesworth and me is one of time," said Coy. "His three years seems much too short to me."

Genial, bumbling Justin Miller, NAB's $75,000-a-year president, told the convention that he saw a faint light of hope. "I'm not so pessimistic as Wayne Coy or 'Deac' Aylesworth," he assured the delegates. "As long as radio profits are necessary to finance television, radio is not in immediate danger of giving way . . ."

Most station owners found cold comfort in being told that radio was doing a good job of nursing and fattening its own assassin. The nation's 50 TV stations (mostly supported by radio) lost $15 million in 1948. While it was being suckled by radio, TV was taking a larger & larger share of radio's advertising. Despite the record revenue for the industry as a whole, one out of every four radio stations showed a loss last year. Nearly half of the 340 stations licensed in 1948 failed to break even. Things looked even worse for 1949. Warned Coy: "Make no mistake about it --television is here and here to stay . . . It is a new force unloosed in the land. I believe it is an irresistible force."

"It's time we got down to specifics," complained one executive. "Instead of playing around with the birds, bees and flowers, why doesn't the NAB dish out the facts of life?" NAB's Richard Doherty replied with some hard TV facts: an average TV station costs nearly as much each year to run ($221,000) as it does to build and equip (up to $350,000). This kind of money was far beyond the reach of the average radio station owner. *At week's end, as the delegates journeyed homeward, there was no sure cure in sight for the ailing patient.

*For a case in point, see BUSINESS.

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