Live From Washington--It’s the Senate on Radio

Live radio coverage of the Senate began today, marking a new era in openness and muting protests by lawmakers and their forebears, who said going on the air would shatter tradition and decorum.

“There’s no turning back,” Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) told an opening ceremony. “The Senate is crossing the bridge and it’s being burned behind us.”

The experimental broadcast coverage, beginning with the prayer that traditionally opens Senate proceedings, runs through July 15 and includes a test of gavel-to-gavel television broadcasts of floor action starting June 1. The lawmakers then will vote on July 29 on whether to make the change permanent.

After a flurry of initial speeches to mark the occasion, the Senate began to debate a proposed balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

Many radio networks picked up the Senate-supplied radio signal that became available at 10 a.m. when Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Md.), a longtime proponent of the broadcasts, threw the switch in a ceremony in the cramped Radio and TV Gallery adjacent to the chamber.

The only daily, gavel-to-gavel broadcast of debate, however, is planned by the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, which already televises House floor action. It will supply audio over its cable television hookup until June 1, when it plans to add the picture to the words.