WHRB Will Pick Committee To Set Up Commercial Code

Disagreement over the broadcast of certain types of commercials has led WHRB to form a committee that will suggest means of allowing the College radio station more control over commercial copy.

Resentment against the announcements of two advertisers who have contracts with the seven member Ivy Network, which includes WHRB, flared up at a staff meeting Monday night. If these advertisers had their contracts cancelled here, it was felt that they might possibly cancel contracts with all of the network's other member stations and not renew them next year.

Though 75 per cent of its program time consists of classical music, WHRB is obliged to play singing commercials and other advertisements which some staff members feel are in bad taste.

"We don't want to cause any of the other stations in the network any difficulty," Herbert M. Franklin '55, president of the Harvard Radio Broadcasting Company, Inc., said last night.

No Gimmicks

"But we don't like high-pressure or gimmick commercials," he continued. "They ought to conform to certain standards, and we want to have the right to reject them."

As a result, WHRB is forming a committee "to draw up a code of continuity acceptance" similar to those used by other stations to govern commercial copy. The code will be presented to the full board of WHRB by the end of February.

It is further hoped that such a code will be drawn up that will be acceptable to all the stations in the Ivy Network.

At present, Ivy is the advertising representative of six other stations besides the one here: Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. Sponsors make contracts with the network to hold for all member stations.

But WHRB wants to reserve the privilege of having the final say as to what types of commercials it broadcasts and yet not hurt the network's other stations.