ADVERTISING OR POLITICS.
American radio programmes, with their large admixture of commercial advertising, are the subject of much present controversy in the American press. "The commercial usage of the radio in the United States," according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "has rendered the new medium, except in isolated instances, a nuisance and a bore." Several critics advocate adoption of either the British or German systems, with public control of programmes and the elimination of advertising. Supporters of the American method, however, claim that its popularity is proof that by and large the American public has no quarrel with it. Some 2,500,000 receiving sets were sold last year, and between four and five million sets are expected to be sold this year. To introduce the European method, it is urged, would involve taxes or licence fees difficult to collect and an annual cost of about $10,000,000 for the necessary administrative machinery. Radio, it is claimed, would be placed in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats and advertising would be replaced by political propaganda. On the whole the traditional American dislike of governmental control seems stronger than present objections to advertising. Advertising in radio programmes, indeed, is as natural to the average American listener-in as it is in his newspaper.
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