Radio Conference

Monday, Dec. 21, 1936

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"Radio education" covers a multitude of broadcasting activities, anything from a concert by the Philharmonic Symphony Society to a classroom lecture by a geology professor. Although over 40% of the programs on the major radio networks are labeled "educational," most schoolmen feel dissatisfied and frustrated over the achievements of radio as an educational medium. Last week as 18 organizations composed of educators and radiomen met for a Conference on Educational Broadcasting, called by the U. S. Office of Education and the Federal Communications Commission at Washington's Mayflower Hotel, this feeling was fully and freely aired.

Educators yearn to take over a part of the nation's radio plant and run it to suit themselves. Director Levering Tyson of the Rockefeller-endowed National Advisory Council on Radio in Education had warned the 500 educators invited to the Conference that "any discussion of such controversial subjects as the allocations of wave lengths will be scrupulously avoided." Two years ago Congress overwhelmingly rejected the Fess and Wagner-Hatfield bills calling for a definite allocation of wave bands for educational purposes. Last week more cold water was thrown on that hope when Chief Engineer T. A. M. Craven of the Federal Communications Commission flatly told an engineers' sub-committee of the Conference: "In talking with some educational experts, I find that they envision a future requirement of something in the order of 15,000 stations to serve the 127,000 school districts in this country alone. . . . The present radio spectrum from ten to 30,000 kilocycles would be a mere 'drop in the bucket' in the solution of the educational radio problem."

Promptly quashed by Federal engineers was the dream of many a delegate that short-wave reception might offer a solution to their hunger for additional radio time. The short-wave bands open to present day receivers are relatively narrow, and largely assigned to commercial operators. President William Mather Lewis of Lafayette College described the only U. S. short-wave station that is non-commercial and non-profit-making, Boston's WIXAL. Founded by Engineer Walter S. Lemmon, who shyly refused last week to make a speech, WIXAL since 1934 has broadcast lectures and lessons by Harvard, Radcliffe and Boston university professors, as well as chamber music and the complete public program of this year's Harvard Tercentenary. Stocky, blond Engineer Lemmon, who was wireless operator on the George Washington when it took Woodrow Wilson to the Peace Conference, made a fortune from his patent on single-dial radio control, is now research chief for International Business Machines Corp. This week the Federal Communications Commission permitted WIXAL to double its power from ten kilowatts to 20, enough to make it clearly audible in Burma.