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The maximum possible number of independent diversified sources of ideas to foster the development and continuity of our open competitive society and the evolution of its free institutions has been established as the conceptual base for the operation of our broadcast structure.' However, inherent in our commercial system of television broadcasting is danger that these high aspirations may be progressively eroded by the practicalities of attracting economic support for television program service through advertising. To permit such a result would be to subordinate the paramount interests of the public in a free market for ideas to commercial interest in a market for goods and services. This paper will deal with an important phase of the conflict between the public interest and the needs of commercial broadcastingthe growth of concentration of control of the television program procurement process. Thomas Jefferson, to whose words and ideas we may safely return in evaluating the needs and usages of a democratic society, could not have imagined a system of instantaneous and pervasive communications such as we are provided by television today. But he understood the requirements of a free people and spoke in terms which are valid for the governance of television as a social implement. His faith in common men assumed their wish to be provided sources of information and ideas to fulfill their need to make informed decisions affecting their common welfare. He foresaw quite prophetically that the future of a democratic society could not be secured by the state of science, no matter how exalted it may be, in the minds of a select band of enlightened men . Progress in the general welfare depends on
Ashbrook P. Bryant (Wed,) studied this question.