PAGE TWO
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 1951
Marvin Arth
the editorial page
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The Battle Of TV Rights—
The recent attempt of three Kansas City radio stations to get possession of the TV channel reserved for Lawrence was not surprising. Similar things happened when radio was the new medium.
The big difference now is in the intensity of their efforts to grab this channel.
Commercial stations were interested in taking over radio frequencies assigned to schools shortly after radio was introduced. But they weren't as frantic in their efforts then simply because there were more frequencies available for radio than there are channels for television.
There is a definite limit to the number of TV channels that can operate, and when those have been assigned it will be physically impossible to have any more. With the tremendous number of frequencies available for radio, commercial stations could afford to bide their time until some schools gave up their assigned frequencies. They evidently feel that with a limited number of channels available they can't afford to do that, and accordingly have taken drastic steps.
Only about 10 per cent of the available channels have been reserved for schools. It seems to me that the remaining 90 per cent of the channels is plenty for uses avowedly for profit.
Educators have no quarrel with commercial stations. They realize that those stations are operating solely on a business basis and must do so to survive financially. On the other hand the educators do not welcome commercial interference with their right to operate non-profit stations for strictly educational purposes.
Television, as an educational medium, has staggering potentialities. Probably it is the most potent mode of communication since the introduction of printing.
Studies in the department of visual instruction have shown that visual education can be very interesting, besides being informative. Well-planned educational programs on TV could furnish tremendous competition for commercial shows. Perhaps that is why the commercial stations have been so quick to promise schools a share of the air time, in return for their channel rights.
Schools that share air time with commercial operators have come out on the short end of the deal in radio, and there is no reason to believe it would be any different with television. Most educational programs have had to be content to broadcast during the hours when the listening audience was the smallest, i.e., when the chances of the commercial man selling his product were the least.
If schools will continue their fight to retain TV channels allotted to them their programs will compete directly with commercial programs for audience interest. That might prove to be a blessing by forcing an improvement in the quality of commercial programs.
If educators ever expect to use television as an educational medium they must not give up in their present fight. When these channels are gone there won't be any more.-Jack Zimmerman.
Francis Kelley
galley-west
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Editing a college humor magazine can be more trying than playing poker with a kibitzer peering over your shoulder. And about as successful at times as introducing a program of birth control for India. With the faculty, the students, and the printer all yammering at him, the student editor finds that life is just a bed of thorny roses. It isn't funny.
An editor of a humor magazine, needless to say, should kick his readers in the funny bone at least every third or fourth joke. In order to do this, he must steal a wide variety of jokes and mix them up to suit the tastes of his individual readers. That's where the rub comes in. Faculty advisers have an uncanny knack for spotting a good story and censoring it beyond recognition. They are incompatible with those of our readers who take an immediate liking to stories of the more earthy type.
So the editor must delve into the depths of psychology, the sub-basement of human behavior, to reach a solution somewhat satisfactory to all concerned. He scientifically prepares a list of jokes for the adviser. By burying a joke with questionable taste in the midst of jokes with highly questionable taste, the editor slips a good many dirty ones past the censor. And then, while the editor is secretly laughing his hardest at having unwitted the censor, the dean of men may slap him in the face with a ban on campus sales. It's enough to make a man want to take a dry dive from the top of the new campanile.
The Sour Owl, official humor magazine of the University, is due off the press any day now. If you don't think it's funny, you won't make me mad by saying so. I'm beyond all caring. Like I say, editing a humor magazine is a trying situation. And I tried.
Achievements are like trousers—they become threadbare if you rest on them.
Big shots are only the small shots who keep shooting.
- * *
Many a cheap politician has cost the state plenty.
Courtesy of the National Safety Council
Slow Minds?
Welcome home, boy. We're glad to see you made it, although we confess we didn't think you would. We fully expected to be reading your obituary in today's Kansan. Or that of an innocent man, woman, or child.
We caught a glimpse of your car, loaded with students and suitcases, its windows plastered with Jayhawker stickers, as you ducked in and out of a long line of cars driven by persons more careful than you.
We saw you bluff out a transport truck on a dangerous hill and scurry across the intersection on the wrong side of the cars ahead of you. We watched you take sharp curves without perceptibly slowing down for them.
We saw a car traveling about 50 miles an hour in a 20-mile school zone. Yes, it was yours.
When we got home, safe but not overly sound, we picked up a brochure put out by the National Committee on Traffic Safety. One statement stood out in context:
"Traffic accidents are on the rise because 90-mile-an-hour cars and 70-mile-an-hour roads are too much for 45-mile-an-hour minds."
How true, how true, Mr. Speeder.
—Faye Wilkinson
University
Daily Hansan
News Room Adv. Room
K.U. 251 K.U. 376
Student Newspaper of the
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Member of the Kansas Press Assn.
National Press Assn, and the Associated College
Press. Represented by the National Ad-
ministration Service 420 Madison Ave, New York City
Editor-in-chief Marvin Arth
Managing Editor Business Manager
Harold A. Benjamin James W. Murray
Asst. Managing Editors: Janet Ogan,
Mona Millikan, Richard Tatum, John
Brown
Bessie Humphrey,
Telegraph Editor ...
Telegraph Editor...Robert Sanford
Asst. Telegraph Editors...Faye
Marion Marian Alwan
Sports Editors...Alan Marshall
Asst. Sports Editors: Bob Nelson, Forrest
Chief Editorial Writer: Francis J. Kelley
Assoc. editorial writer: Jack Zimmerman
City Editor: Lee Shepeard
City Editor: Richard Marshall
Feature Editor: Richard Marshall
Society Editor: Nancy Anderson
Asst'S Society Editors: Cynthia McKee,
Advertising Mgr... James Lowther
National Adv. Mgr... Dorothy Kolb
Professional Adm.. Virginia Johnston
Classified Ad. Mgr... Robert Sydney
University Daily Kansan
Mail subscription: $3 a semester, $4.50
a semester postage), Published in Lawyers,
every afternoon during the University
week; Annual lecture of university
versity holidays and examination periods.
Entered as second class matter Sept. 17.
Kans, under act of March 3, 1879.
Ministers who take a firm stand against games of chance will go right on performing marriage ceremonies.
At times the ability to look stupid is a valuable asset.
The people who get you into trouble seldom help you out.
Courtesey of True. the Man's Magazine
How Many Rattles?
How Many Rattles?
Open Mon. thru Fri. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
2nd Floor Union Alpha Phi Omega
tau sigma modern dance fraternity presents
8:00 p.m.
wednesday, may 16th
thursday, may 17th
fraser theater
reserve tickets on sale at:
robinson gym, room 106
front of library
box office, night of performa
box office - nights of performance
admission
50c
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