CANADIAN RADIO

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 39, 14 August 1930, Page 23

CANADIAN RADIO

POLITICAL BEOADCASTS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

VANCOUVER, 23rd July.

It costs money to cheer a candidate when he is addressing a meeting nowadays. Cheers, take time, and the candidate, more often than not, is having his speech broadcast over the radio at so much an hour- . '.

The recent General Election in Canada saw an almost universal use of the radio. There were trans-Canada broadcasts, provincial broadcasts, and local broadcasts. A Dominion'wide broadcast costs £400 an hour, or over &Q a minute. The result of such a wide use of the radio is that the elector has heard all the arguments of the leaders in the first few days, and speakers are hard put to find new arguments. On the other hand, the listener-in has a grouch about too much political campaigning by the radio, especially in the evening when he wants a little bright music or other . diversion to ease his mind and his nerves after a hard day's work. The campaign has run six, weeks. There is a general call for the campaign in future to run not more -than two weeks.

The radio was first widely used for political campaigning in the last Presidential election in the "United States. Both Mr. Hoover and Mr. Smith used it for coast-to-cpast hook-ups frequently. Even here in Vancouver, time and again we heard Al Smith, simulating a shocked expression, pleading with Ms audiences, not to interrupt his speeches with cheers, because cheers cost money on. the "raddio," as the Happy Warrior pronounces it. "Save them till the end,"he would urge. Broadcasting in the- last General Election in Great Britain generally