Senator CAPEHART. What about yours? Mr. CRANEY. My rate in five stations in Montana, all five of the is $17 per announcement. Senator TOBEY. How long is the announcement? Mr. CRANEY. One-minute maximum. Senator TOBEY. Spot announcements? Mr. CRANEY. Yes. Senator TOBEY. This has nothing to do with the subject, but do mos radio stations charge higher prices for political talks than they do for commercial advertisements? Mr. CRANEY. I don't know exactly how to answer that, Senator It is according to what you mean by "political broadcasts." Did yo. say "political talk" or political broadcast." Senator TOBEY. Should there be a law that no station shall char any more for a political talk in campaign time than they do for t same amount of time on commercial programs? Mr. CRANEY. On that score I think it makes a lot of difference on the kind of program that you have. For instance, I know of stations that have one rate for musical entertainment programs and another ra for straight talk programs. It doesn't make any difference whether is political or whether it is somebody who wants to get up and talk. Senator TOBEY. Programs other than musical programs are all it the same category? Mr. CRANEY. That is correct. There would be no discriminatio that I know of in the whole industry against politicians as such. Some stations charge for religion. Some stations don't. Some stations put on Senator TOBEY. It is a matter up to the individual station? Senator TOBEY. Could I just read a telegram before you resume here. This is dated at Denver, Colo. : Mutual Broadcasting System director of engineering, Earl M. Johnson, was not speaking for this Mutual station and probably many other affiliates when > said MBS was not in favor of proposed provisions of the Senate bill S. 2 during his testimony before your committee last week. We believe he was speaking in behalf of WOR and/or WGN only. GENE O'FALLON, KFEL, MBS I just wanted to put it in the record. Mr. CRANEY. I will get back to where I left off here. I said it true that many local stations make money, but when you average ⠀! the income of the clears, you find according to the figures preparei the FCC in the past, that about 50 cents out of every dollar the da channels take in turns up as profit. Before the war the locals were at the break-even mark. The war and postwar figures have charge slightly, but I was informed that of the NAB membership, about percent was in the bottom income brackets: yet they were raised? percent in their dues. This is a group of stations with average gros revenue under $25,000 yearly. How they are going to get much prot from that small gross income to compete with even the $27,000 pr** of the KSL station, the lowest income station of the clears, I do know. Because of the figures submitted by KSL, we asked for softe figures also. I called Senator Johnson on the phone and asked if b could get me some figures, and he said he could get them. I call-i, I think it was Friday, wasn't it, Senator? Senator JOHNSON. Yes. Mr. CRANEY. Something like that. These are the figures that were given me with a study of what the income is of the clear-channel stations and the other stations in the same town where these clear channel 1-A's are located. Senator CAPEHART. Do we have a copy of that? Mr. CRANEY. Here they are, Senator. Senator CAPEHART. Do you need it? Mr. CRANEY. I can read from these notes I have, I think. Senator CAPEHART. These are the same figures we had here the other day, are they not? Mr. CRANEY. They may be because I got them from the committee. One thing about these figures is there are some data covering network stations which are not comparable because the networks are not required to separate their income data. But if you leave out the stations which are network key stations and take the clears, you will find that there are 18 1-A stations. Their total income before taxes was $5,625,981. They averaged $312,554 income in 1940. There were 30 locals. in the same cities with classifications that you could get the figures from that had a total of $256,718 income, averaged $12,830 profit, or approximately 4 percent of the sum earned by the clears. In other words, the locals got 4 cents profit as against every dollar profit that the clears made. So that doesn't stack up very well with the statement that was made here about earnings of clears and locals. Leaving out the war years, we come to 1946, and we had the 18 clears with the average income per station before taxes of $477,278. The average for the locals was $63,375. Approximately 13 percent, or 13 cents of every dollar as compared to every dollar of the clears. I think it would be useful if this entire table were placed in the record at this point. (The table referred to follows:) COMPARATIVE BROADCAST INCOME DATA OF 1-A CLEAR CHANNEL REGIONAL UNLIMITED AND LOCAL UNLIMITED STATIONS FOR THE YEARS 1940, 1942, 1944, AND 1946. (As used throughout this report, broadcast income refers to the amount retained after payment of all operating expenses but before payment of Federal income tax.) NOTE The attached tables show for each city in which the 26 I-A clear channel stations are located, the broadcast income of the I-A station and the broadcast income of each regional unlimited and local unlimited station located in that city. Only those regional and local stations which were in operation in 1940 have been included. Each city is identified by a letter and each station by a number. In cities containing I-A stations where there was no local unlimited station, data have been included for local unlimited stations located either in another city in the same metropolitan district as the I-A station or in another metropolitan district of the same general population size. Such instances are designated by an asterisk (*). It should also be noted that six I-A clear channel stations (located in two cities) are designated by the networks owning them as "key" stations, i. e., stations at which most of the networks' programs originate. The annual financial reports filed by the networks owning these stations do not contain complete allocations of expenses covering the operations of the "key" stations as distinct from the operations of the network. Consequently, broadcast income data are not available for these stations. In lieu of this, however, the total broadcast revenues of such stations are given on the attached tables. To facilitate com parisons, the total broadcast revenues (in addition to the broadcast income) of the other stations in the same city are also given. All class I-A clear-channel stations operate with power of 50,000 watts; regional stations operate with power of 500, 1,000, or 5,000 watts; local stations operate with power of 100 or 250 watts. Standard broadcast stations, comparison of the broadcast income (before Federal income tax) of each I-A clear channel station with that of regional unlimited and local unlimited stations in the same city |