The Pittsburgh Press (September 12, 1944)
Networks harvest millions in campaign time
Political figures are staggering
By Si Steinhauser
Some years ago, a Pittsburgh man set aside a fund of $11 million to be spent in philanthropic endeavors while he is still alive. He is still living and seeing his money at work. The boss assigned me to ask him why he gave his millions away. His answer was quite simple:
I made that money selling dehydrated potatoes to the government for shipment overseas. It doesn’t belong to me, so I’m giving it back to the people to whom it belongs.
Yesterday we asked one of the nice young women in our office to tabulate the cost of an all-network political broadcast by President Roosevelt or Governor Dewey from Standard Rate and Data, the Bible or cost book of radio. She added up the cost of a single half hour at $50,781. Since they usually talk longer, the rate may double. If each candidate spoke only a half hour on 10 broadcasts someone would pay the networks a minimum of $1 million for radio time. That figure may be doubled by talks by vice-presidential and other candidates and single station broadcasts by state, county and municipal candidates across the country will probably add another million to network and local station treasuries.
We couldn’t ask all of the people who contribute this money to campaign treasuries why they so it so we asked our associate editor and political authority, Kermit McFarland, and he gave us quite as simple an answer as the philanthropist: “Because they want to see the man to whose campaign fund they contribute elected.”
We’re naïve about politics but there must be more than that to it. Spending $2 million to get a man a $75,000 (Mr. Roosevelt cut his pay to $25,000) job doesn’t add up.
If you like comparative figures, NBC charges $15,646 for a half hour of night time, CBS asks $15,225, the Blue Network $11,869 and Mutual $8,041.
Suppose Mr. Roosevelt were to speak on all networks and a single local station decided not to carry his talk but to substitute a local candidate’s talk or even a talk by say, Mr. Dewey, who might be in town that night.
“You go ahead and suppose Steinhauser,” said a station manager. “We could do a thing like that but we wouldn’t dare.”
Stations discussed editorial and political policies last year and decided to keep hands off because the present outmoded radio law provides that if a station gives time to one side of a controversy it must give equal time and facilities to the other side.
So say the broadcasters, according to the law, if we took time to say “We’re for Roosevelt” we would have to add “And we’re also for Dewey.”