This DCist lives in an apartment building that not only has a PA system but keeps that PA system tuned to the satellite radio 80s station. We begin our day with Depeche Mode no matter what. When you think about it, you’re forced to listen to music in many places, whether it’s the staple jazz bleating from Starbucks speakers or the minstrels of the metrorail stations. But it’s one thing when “Banana” provides you a bossa nova soundtrack for your BoBO shopping and quite another when the government has its hand on the dial. Because everything is government here in D.C., and not just government but the federal government, the Supreme Court had the chance to take up the interesting free speech questions involved in the case Public Utilities Commission v. Pollak.
Before the days of red lines, and green lines and blue lines — oh, my! — D.C. was a streetcar city. Beginning in the 1910s, trolleys and buses began a sort-of-peaceful coexistence on the D.C. roadways. The Capital Transit Company operated a bus and streetcar company, under a franchise from Congress. In 1948, the company decided to experiment with an in-car radio program. The local radio stations would pay Capital Transit to play its feeds in its street cars and buses, on the condition that the programming met certain standards of quality, taste and minimal advertising. Capital Transit initially made $15,000 off the deal, and stood to make over $100,000 (think Uncle Scrooge’s money vault in 1948 currency) if it installed the receivers in all of its cars.
The Public Utilities Commission, which regulated the transit company, decided to investigate whether the program was “consistent with public convenience, comfort and safety.” After conducting a survey that found that only 3% of passengers were staunchly against the radio system, the Commission gave the program a green light. But Franklin Pollak, an angry passenger — obviously unhappy with the Bing Crosby he was subjected to day in and day out — intervened in the case and appealed it to the federal district court. That court ruled in their favor, at least with respect to the commercials and other announcements.
Pollak’s arguments, which the Supreme Court curtly rejected, were based on the First and Fifth Amendments. The radio program interfered with his free speech rights to make conversation and to listen only to what he wanted to hear. Moreover, he argued, the government — insofar as it controlled the transit company — was invading his right to privacy.
