DX to DC

Last Saturday midnight control of all but a few kilowatts of U.S. short-wave (DX) broadcasting passed quietly out of private hands. Six of the seven owners* of the 14 U.S. transmitters now feeding news and the U.S. point of view to foreign ears stepped out as owner-managers, became simply landlords. The seventh, World Wide's WRUL in Boston, balked. It wanted further assurance that it would not have to carry any "boilerplate" programs which might dissolve the station's already large European audiences.

The others leased their equipment for the duration (but with specific guarantees that it was to be for "emergency" only) to two Federal agencies: Elmer Davis' Office of War Information and Nelson Rockefeller's Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. What radio men had long been braced to expect had at last become an actuality.

The move was not an indictment of private broadcasters. They had been doing the best they knew how. But badly needed now, Washington bigwigs agreed, was something best done by a unified command: a full-scale offensive on the psychological warfare front.

For the present, short-wave broadcasters will continue to do business at the same old stand, keeping the best of the present good will programs. But in time OWI plans a 24-hour-a-day schedule to Europe in English, German, Italian and French, and to the Far East in English, Chinese, Dutch and Japanese. The Government's main contribution will consist of news programs. CIAA will continue to broadcast to South America in English, Portuguese, several dialects of Spanish. To do a bang-up job, the U.S. will need more transmitters than it now has (for instance, a battery of 16 beamed to Latin America alone). To supplement the 14 transmitters now in operation, Government officials would like to erect 22 more, will probably be content with an extra six, owing to the shortage of critical materials.

When these are finished, the U.S. will still remain far behind the Axis, which has 100 short-wave transmitters, even a poor second to Great Britain, which has some 50. But the setup will permit the U.S. to air its point of view to the rest of the world on a new scale.

* The seven: NBC, CBS, General Electric, Westinghouse, Crosley of Cincinnati, World Wide Broadcasting of Boston, Associated Broadcasters of San Francisco.

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