Active Radio: Pacifica's Brash Experiment

204 Pages·1999·1.431 MB·English

by  Jeff Land

Commerce and Mass Culture Series
Edited by Justin Wyatt
Active Radio:Pacifica’s Brash Experiment
Jeff Land
Pacifica’s Brash Experiment
Jeff Land
Commerce and Mass Culture Series
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 1999 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint lines
from “Great Chinese Dragon,”by Lawrence Ferlinghetti,from Starting from San Francisco;
copyright 1961 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions
Publishing Corp.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a
retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,
photocopying,recording,or otherwise,without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South,Suite 290
Minneapolis,MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Land,Jeff.
Active radio :Pacifica’s brash experiment / Jeff Land.
p. cm. — (Commerce and mass culture ; 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8166-3156-5 (hc). — ISBN 0-8166-3157-3 (pb)
1. Pacifica Radio. 2. Alternative radio broadcasting—
United States. I. Title. II. Title:Pacifica’s brash experiment.
III. Series.
HE8697.75.U6L36 1999
384.54'06'573—dc21 98-56538
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This work is dedicated with love to my parents,Arthur and Minna Land.
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. The Rise of Corporate Broadcasting 11
2. Lew Hill’s Passion and the Origins of Pacifica 27
3. Listener-Sponsored Radicalism on KPFA 39
4. The Development of the Pacifica Network 63
5. Free Speech Radio 91
6. WBAIand the Explosion of Live Radio 113
7. Beloved Community 133
Conclusion 143
Notes 149
Bibliography 161
Pacifica Programs 169
Index 173
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Preface
Congressional hearings in 1926 found legislators debating federal regulation of
radio. Of urgent concern was securing a stable means of financing the program-
ming in the five-year-old industry. Since 1921 income from the sale of radiolas
themselves had subsidized the cost of the broadcasts. But the moment loomed
when most households would own a receiver, eliminating the potential revenue
from this source. The practice of selling airtime to advertisers to cover program-
ming expenses had not yet spread to the majority of the nearly seven hundred ra-
dio stations in the United States. In fact,Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover,
to whom the federal regulation of broadcasting had been delegated,was on record
opposing radio commercials:“It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a
possibility for service to be drowned in advertising chatter.”1
Of the many criticisms of paid advertising in this period,one of the more in-
teresting came in written testimony to the Congress from W. G. Cowles,head of
the Chicago-based Zenith Radio Corporation. In 1926,Cowles viewed advertis-
ing as a threat to national security. If stations were to relinquish control over their
programs to any paying sponsor,“Bolshevist propaganda will have a better chance
in this country than ever before....All radical thinkers,whether in politics,reli-
gion,or anything else,will fill the air with their efforts to poison the minds. This
situation is intolerable.”2
Congress continued its work for a year,fashioning the Dill-White Radio Act
of 1927. This scaffold on which all subsequent telecommunication policy in the
United States would rest contained but a single reference to advertising:any pro-
gram sponsored by a business must identify that enterprise by name,so that wily,
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