Hugh R. Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States, 1920-1960. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. xv + 308 pp. $45 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8018-6450-x.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Carole E. Scott, Department of Economics, State University of West Georgia.

Through a detailed reconstruction of key policy decisions, Hugh Slotten's Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States, 1920-1960 seeks to analyze the role of radio and television engineers in the regulation of radio and television. "This book examines key decisions made by government institutions that oversaw the development of the radio and television industry....[it] specifically focuses on the intersection of technical issues and the social, political, legal, and economic components of decision making." Slotten hopes that this focus on engineering standards will help "illuminate the complex interplay between technical issues and such fundamental concerns as monopoly concentration, patent structure, and control of information." As these quotes indicate, however, the book's title is somewhat misleading. Perhaps The Role of Engineers in the Regulation of the Radio and Television Industry would have been a more appropriate title?

Surveying, selecting, organizing, and presenting in a coherent and meaningful manner the tremendous amount of material that must be considered in writing a book of this type is a monumental task. Therefore it is almost inevitable that this book displays some weakness in this regard. It is unfortunate, however, that a book about the regulation of radio and television broadcasting, which devotes much of its attention to the various responsibilities and activities of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), never provides a complete and succinct description of the FCC. A statement along these lines would have been helpful: The Federal Communications Act of 1934, which replaced the Radio Act of 1927, incorporated most of the 1927 act's provisions for radio. The only significant difference between these two acts is that the 1934 act combined into one agency -- the Federal Communication Commission -- regulatory powers over radio, telegraph, and telephone and gave it seven, rather than the five members of the Federal Radio Commission had. The FCC's members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. In addition to issuing licenses, it makes rules covering engineering matters, general program standards, and competitive practices. (The first mention of the FCC is on page viii, where the reader is told that it has overseen the development of radio and television since 1934. It is next mentioned on page x, where it is explained that "The 1934 Communications Act, which established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), sought to centralize the government's administration of communications in one federal agency; as far as the regulation of radio broadcasting was concerned, the 1934 law essentially institutionalized the policies of the radio commission." The identical description of the FCC also appears on page 44.)

One of Slotten's most important conclusions is that because, during the 1920s, "U.S. engineers forged an alliance with the businessmen who paid their salaries," the heavy reliance of the Federal Radio Commission on engineers was based on a false belief that they were unbiased and objective. However, he also concludes, that these experts "played an important role in finessing dilemmas inherent to corporate liberalism, including the tension between individualism and corporate collectivism as well as the dialectic between neutral legalism and pluralist decision making." Unfortunately, he does little to expound upon these themes. There were, he notes, some engineers whose opinions were not colored by the business interests of their employers. One of these was radio pioneer Lee de Forrest, an early president of the Institute of Radio Engineers. De Forrest, an inventor and entrepreneur who spoke out against what he called the greed of direct advertising, espoused, says Slotten, a philosophy of what was in the public interest that was in no way related to his technological expertise. Oddly, De Forest's less than sterling reputation as a businessman is not mentioned.

In other places, Slotten's analysis provides useful insights into the reasons that that social, economic, and political factors need to be considered along with technical ones. He points out that social, economic, and political factors meant that difficult technical trade offs had to be made. For example, policy makers agreed that widespread access to TV was in the public interest, but in order for many people to purchase TV sets, they must be cheap; so expensive sets and sets that might soon need to be replaced will not do. The companies that were developing the technology necessary for the creation of a television broadcasting industry wanted to begin earning a return on their substantial investments sooner, rather than later. Setting standards as soon as they wished might have meant that TV sets would soon become obsolete as new and better technologies were developed. A high quality picture was in the public's interest, but not setting standards so that TV broadcasting could begin because a new technology that would provide a better picture might soon be developed could result in an interminable delay. Patents forced each company to develop its own system. Common standards would enable every TV set to receive all broadcasts and, thereby, prevent monopoly, but each company pressed the FCC for the adoption of their system. Flexible standards would allow for improvements based on new technology to be introduced. Increasing channel width would allow for a better picture, but it would reduce the number of frequencies available for other services. Obviously, such trade offs were not easy to make.

This book is a good resource for those interested in learning in some detail about the nature and importance of the input provided to the Radio Commission and the Federal Communications Commission by engineers and the numerous disagreements among engineers and between them and non-engineers and the reasons for this conflict. Its weakness is that, if it were fiction, it would be a book of short stories, rather than a novel.

Carole Scott is the author of "The History of the Radio Industry in the US to 1940" in the EH.NET Encyclopedia. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/scott.radio.industry.history.php