intrusive measures were ultimately rejected in favor of the present equal access provision (then section 18),14 they bespeak Congress' strong desire to control the power of the new broadcast media.


47
An interchange in the midst of House debate on the Radio Act makes clear that Congress intended its restrictions on the media's exercise of power to apply to subscription as well as free services.  Representative Davis, the unsuccessful proponent of specific anti-monopoly provisions, was asked whether the bill, without his amendment, would "increase the danger of charging for listening in."    68 Cong.Rec. 2577 (1927) (statement of Rep. Box).  After responding that he believed that the bill should have forbidden "a charge to listeners," Davis listed provisions still in the bill that he thought wouldnot a word during the passage of the 1934 Act to suggest that Congress had in any way altered its 1927 view that protection against the dangers of political partisanship were just as necessary in direct-charge as in advertiser-funded radio broadcasting.16


51
The 1934 Act defined "broadcasting" for the first time and did so in a way designed primarily to distinguish broadcasting from common carrier services.17   The precise language of Sec. 153(o ) was drawn from the Washington International Radiotelegraph Convention of 1927, which defined a "broadcasting service" as "a service carrying on the dissemination of radio communications intended to be received by the public...."18  The Commission makes much of the fact that the 1927 Convention excluded fixed, or point-to-point, services from broadcasting.  This historical argument,