Pastore's All Purpose Program
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television PASTORE'S ALL-PURPOSE PROGRAM BY MARVIN KITMAN Dr. Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, won yet another award for public service last month this time from that disinterested body,...
...There's no money in televising congressional proceedings...
...The fcc has one of the most devastating investigative teams in the Federal bureaucracy, handling roughly 36,000 complaints and other matters a year...
...Pastore's technique is to express an idea in a calm, resonant voice and then settle back in his plush leather chair...
...Even Lucille Ball needs at least a half-hour to hold an audience...
...in the 35 years the fcc has had this power, it has taken away not one license...
...For two hours and 13 minutes Pastore made these giants of the communications world sit and wait like seven blocks of granite while he spoke passionately about the rise of sex and filth on the airwaves...
...After all, they have rules against it...
...The only new cbs shows I've heard about so far are Hee Haw and The Glen Campbell Good Time Show, both of which tell us very little about the government and much about the network...
...Hopefully, when the Pastore subcommittee finishes talking about the strengths and weaknesses of his bill, it will turn its attention to investigating the stations' diligence in collecting bills for political advertising after senatorial campaigns...
...government bonds...
...John Mitchell...
...But first let me say a word or two on the production of such a show, based on the coverage cbs gave the December hearings...
...Whether senators own broadcasting stations is not nearly as important as whether the broadcasters own the senators...
...Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, won yet another award for public service last month this time from that disinterested body, the Advertising Council...
...This may not have been good government, but it was great theater...
...Pastore finally had to break in and inform him the ground had already been covered...
...For years everybody has known a majority of the Senate and House Banking Committee members own stocks in banks, which isn't all bad: We wouldn't want legislators who don't know anything about a subject making the laws...
...As the words ricochet off the walls, he hears them as if for the first time and comes back to the subject, now really angry...
...I attended hearings of the Senate subcommittee on communications last December 1-5 that would have made an excellent pilot for a series called This Is Your Government...
...We already have a fairly good idea...
...The only way we can keep the right to know alive," he explained, "is by expanding it, making sure that our citizens know more about government and its actions, not less...
...Stanton to begin if he is really serious about wanting to let the American people know about Congress...
...Your average Senate hearing room is a place where learned men like senators gather to talk about what is already known, where the obvious is put on record so it can be largely ignored...
...Its duties have been increasing geometrically since the fcc was founded—yet it has fewer employes today than in 1947...
...Less understandable is why the Senator feels compelled to deliver a standard litany on his objectivity...
...Some critics think the Senator acts like this just to make headlines...
...which more and more is becoming the network of record, gave it two-and-a-half minutes the next morning on the Today show...
...By the time he finishes denouncing self-interest and his escalating passion peaks, one is convinced the Senator doesn't even own any U.S...
...Personally, I think the American people would rather not know what their government is doing...
...The knowledge that each case history he described had a happy ending gave his performance the kind of crocodile tears so essential to this art form...
...The network ignored the hearings in their entirety, nbc...
...One of the great compromises came out of the recent discussions on the cigarette advertising ban...
...Even if Stanton is right about our need to know, his call for televising the proceedings on the floor of Congress may be too ambitious...
...One commissioner, Nicholas Johnson, wrote his speech in his sick bed with a portable typewriter on his lap...
...The way the Communications Act of 1934 reads, broadcasters must prove every third year that their programs have been in the public interest...
...The bad guys (the people) are trying to undermine the country by capriciously filing costly suits challenging the programs of the good guys (the broadcasters), on which the fcc must then go on to hold hearings...
...The broadcasters pleaded for the ban to take effect in September 1970...
...But his subcommittee does have a number of amusing routines...
...In accepting the honor at the Waldorf-Astoria, Stanton delivered a hardhitting speech about the need for greater access by broadcasting to the significant proceedings of the Congress...
...The two groups haggle like merchants in a Turkish bazaar...
...The vested interests have good taste in entertainment...
...The subcommittee was furious...
...It may be that he just likes to talk about sex and filth...
...But I didn't envy the good doctor-president having to sell this one back at the office the next morning...
...The television audience would be most attuned to the Pastore hearings in the area of irrelevance...
...The Senate committees, however, welcome exposure...
...After Senator X grilled a witness and departed, Senator Y entered and started asking the same multipart question, ignoring the wagging arms of the subcommittee chairman...
...In football, this kind of play is known as the delayed buck...
...Like most senators, they are busy men who serve on many committees and must rush around from hearing to hearing, often arriving unprepared...
...It's not often that one can combine a civics lesson with elements of soap opera, mystery and intrigue, situation comedy, and the tedium of late-night talk shows—all under the direction of a master showman like Senator John O. Pastore (D.-R.L...
...It insisted the broadcasters think of the football season next year, and voted to start the ban in January 1971...
...With so much going for it in the way of entertainment and educational television values, future Pastore subcommittee hearings are the logical place for Dr...
...That's no way to treat a friend of broadcasting like Senator John O. Pastore...
...Pastore is not as funny a figure as, say, Mrs...
...Under this law it has been fairly difficult for the Federal Communications Commission to revoke licenses on the flimsy grounds of poor programming...
...On the banquet circuit Stanton comes up with a lot of sound ideas about what tv should do...
...At one of the Pastore subcommittee sessions, Senator X—I want to protect the guilty—rushed into the room armed only with questions prepared by a broadcast industry lobbyist...
...It was pure soap opera when Pastore spoke emotionally about the plight of the little broadcasters, the ma's and pa's who must struggle to earn their daily bread never knowing which third year the fcc will rob them of their license...
...They had worked for days polishing their arguments...
...Still, I've been reading cbs press releases on new programs the last few days to see if any progress is being made along the lines suggested by Stanton's speech...
...Under the new law proposed by Pastore, it will be even harder for groups who feel their interests are not being served to enter the electronic communications business...
...The general public had stayed away from the hearing room in the New Senate Office Building, which was just as well, since there were hardly enough seats for the broadcasters, their lobbyists and lawyers, who have been great fans of the subcommittee for years...
...Although television camera crews were present the first day of the hearings, cbs did a questionable job of keeping the American people informed...
...The commissioners' briefs went into the record unread...
...A fan of subcommittee theatrics told me that some irresponsible witness once made the mistake of accusing the Senator of being financially involved in broadcasting...
...With all the problems facing television, it seemed a little remarkable to me that the one thing the senators thought necessary to investigate now was the financial insecurity of broadcasters...
...But Pastore apparently knew that with this poverty program for the industry he was appealing to his audience...
...At last count there were three fcc investigators...
...The first day of the hearings all seven fcc commissioners, at Pastore's invitation, came in to give the subcommittee the benefit of their wisdom on his bill...
...I don't own a nickel's worth of broadcasting stock," he explained the first, second, third and fourth day that I attended the subcommittee hearings...
...To experience the drama and suspense of the foreign intrigue shows, one has only to watch the Pastore subcommittee and the broadcasters hammer out mutually acceptable solutions to old problems...
...The hearings conducted by chairman Pastore on the Pastore bill—sponsored by seven of the nine members of the subcommittee—were in this great tradition of American government...
...S.2004, as it is affectionately known on Capitol Hill, is a measure such groups as the aclu and the National Council of Churches claim will in effect give the broadcasting station owners their licenses in perpetuity...
...And when Pastore evoked the image of the mighty fcc doing battel against the villain—the people who weren't smart enough to get broadcasting licenses when they were cheap—I had the feeling I was watching a thriller like The FBI Story...
...This is one area where every administration sees fit to economize...
Vol. 53 • January 1970 • No. 1
