Significance: In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the government’s right to monitor the relationship between radio networks and individual broadcast stations to protect the public interest.
Background: In 1938 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) conducted an investigation to determine whether network broadcasting should be regulated. Afterward, the commission recommended adopting a series of regulations to clarify the relationship between networks and individual radio stations and to prevent networks from acting against the public interest. At that time the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) dominated radio business in the United States, controlling a total of 85 percent of the nighttime broadcasting power. NBC sued the government over the new regulations, particularly those concerning contracts between local radio stations and the national networks. NBC claimed that the FCC’s powers should be limited to regulating the engineering and technical aspects of radio, not the regulation of how the networks conducted business.
Decision: This case was argued on February 10­11, 1943, and decided on May 10, 1943. Justices Hugo Black and John Rutledge did not participate. Justices Frank Murphy and Owen Roberts dissented. Justice Felix Frankfurter spoke for the Court, which upheld the FCC’s position. Citing the Communications Act of 1934, which aimed to provide the benefit of radio to all Americans, the Court judged that the jurisdiction of the FCC was not limited just to technical concerns. The Court emphasized that radio was a relatively new medium and that the FCC had been given a broad range of power to keep monopolies from taking over radio. These powers included investigating the details of network contracts with local radio stations. The Supreme Court also denied an NBC claim that the regulations interfered with the network’s First Amendment right to free speech.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “The fact that the chain broadcasting method brings benefits and advantages to both the listening public and to broadcast station licensees does not mean that the prevailing [commonplace] practices and policies of the networks and their outlets are sound in all respects, or that they should not be altered. The Commission’s duty under the Communications Act of 1934 . . . is not only to see that the public receives the advantages and benefits of chain broadcasting, but also, so far as its powers enable it, to see that practices which adversely [negatively] affect the ability of licensees to operate in the public interest are eliminated.”
