University of Virginia Library

For a treatise that personifies the ambivalence of liberal church leaders toward radio and television broadcasting from the onset, see JOHN W. BUCKMAN, THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD OF RADIO AND TELEVISION. (1960). Their response was not totally negative. "As early as 1923 the Federal Council of Churches [the forerunner of the National Council of Churches] officially encouraged local church federations to develop cooperative radio ministries." Voskuil, supra note 5, at 76. This counsel was to some measure followed, but liberal church leaders never became as excited about the possibilities of broadcasting as did the evangelical traditions.

Forerunner to the FCC.

FRC was created by the Radio Act of 1927, which empowered an independent agency to assign frequencies, license stations, review the performance of those licensed, and otherwise exercise broad authority in the regulation of broadcast communications.

In 1931 the license of a powerful and controversial Los Angeles religious broadcaster, "Fighting Bob" Shuller, was withdrawn.

Policy Statement of the NBC Advisory Committee on Religious Activities, in JEFFREY K. HADDEN & CHARLES E. SWANN. PRIME TIME PREACHERS at 77.

Ibid.

Ostensibly, this policy shift was to bring CBS into conformity with the other network. In reality, it was a means of getting rid of Father Charles Coughlin, whose sermons were considered too controversial. CBS, like NBC, called upon the Federal Council for assistance in programming.

When evangelicals did get on local stations, they were twice as likely to be charged for the airtime, as were Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants. Voskuil, supra note 7, at 76.

Federal Council officials denied this and investigators of the controversy have failed to find a smoking gun. It is also likely that both networks and local stations were pressured by prospective advertisers for these choice time slots. William Martin, Giving the Winds a Mighty Voice, in AMERICAN EVANGELICALS AND THE MASS MEDIA. 63 (Quentin J. Schultze ed., 1990). Lowell Saunders, in perhaps the most comprehensive investigation of the controversy, concluded that the charges against the Federal Council could only be considered hearsay, and that there exist there existed a high correlation between the economic health of the broadcasting industry and their willingness to sell time to evangelicals. When local stations or networks needed money, they sold time to evangelicals. Lowell Saunders, The National Religious Broadcasters and the Availability of Commercial Radio Time (1968) (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation University of Illinois).
While there may have been no overt conspiratorial activities to exclude evangelicals, there can be no question that the Federal Council preferred to have its own members represented on the network airwaves rather than nonmember churches. Furthermore, it is clear that many liberal church leaders were openly hostile toward the evangelical broadcasters as is evidenced in the editorial policy of The Christian Century, long the most prominent independent publication of liberal Protestantism. When Mutual announced its decision to restrict access, The Christian Century published an article bitterly complaining that they had not gone far enough:
The network religious radio program racket, capitalized by independent super-fundamentalist revivalists, will not be eliminated nationally until Mutual goes the whole way and bans paid religious programs altogether, as the other networks have done. Charles W. Crowe, Religion on the Air, THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY 973-74 (1944).

Ralph M. Jennings, Policies and Practices in Selected National Religious Bodies as Related to Broadcasting in the Public Interest, 1920-1950, 317 (1968) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New York University).

JAMES DEFOREST MURCH, ADVENTURES FOR CHRIST IN CHANGING TIMES. 173 (1973).

JEFFREY K. HADDEN & AANSON SHUPE. TELEVANGELISM: POWER AND POLITICS ON GOD'S FRONTIER. 48 (1988). Personal interview, May 17, 1991. I did not sense that the former commissioner meant this literally but, rather, intended to emphasize the fact that religious broadcasters are sophisticated lobbyists.

A few radio broadcasters, like Charles E. Fuller and Walter E. Maier, gained network access and, thus, large national audiences. But on the whole, evangelicals found themselves struggling for access in local markets. The combination of a competitive free market and an unsympathetic Federal Radio Commission made it difficult for them to own radio stations. The policies of NBC and CBS offered access only through sustaining-time, and the cozy relationships the networks formed with the Federal Council of Churches alliance substantially blocked access to outlets for reaching a national audience.

Ibid.