U.S. Radio Commission Curtails Wave Length of Station Whap

Charges against the United States Radio Commission that its decision to curtail the wave length of forty-two broadcasting stations, including station WHAP, was influenced by opponents of the policy of this station, were made by Franklin Ford, manager of WHAP.

Station WHAP which is conducted by Mrs. Augusta B. Stetson, leader of a seceding wing of the Christian Science Church, has been broadcasting attacks on Jews and Catholics.

O. H. Caldwell, New York’s representative of the commission, announced that forty-two broadcasting stations in the United States were within the 10 kilocycle range of the wave lengths used by Canadian stations and must find other waves immediately.

Mr. Ford said that WHAP’s wave length of 431 meters “is 5.6 kilocycles away from Canada’s channel of 434.5 meters, which we thought was sufficient separation, at that distance, and is more separation than exists between many American stations.”

Mr. Ford declared in his statement: “It is evident that a concerted drive is being made by opponents of our stand for traditional American Protestant principles to influence the Radio Commission to act unfavorably toward us. I do not believe the commission can be moved at all by such propaganda.

“Congress expressly omitted from the law the proposed censorship provisions and a suppression of the station, or a virtual suppression, by removing us to an inaudible wave channel, would contravene the intention of the law, it seems to me. In attacking and exposing the attempts of certain alien groups to break down our immigration restriction laws, we are entirely within our rights. To interpret these talks as ‘fostering race hatreds,’ as some New York papers have done, is merely their effort to pander to the vast alien groups in this city.”