UNITED STATES

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 35, 11 February 1936, Page 3

UNITED STATES

RADIO INESCAPABLE

GOOD POINTS AMD BAD

RACY COMMENTATORS

Radio in New York is insscapable. It creeps out to your ship from the wharves by the Hudson: it speaks surprisingly from under the seat of your taxi-cab; your hotel bedroom when you enter is full of music; in "automat" and drug-store its voie>■'now strident, now caressing, overlies the clink of plates on glass-topped tables; from the skyscraper huddle on Manhattan tip to the sumptuous apartment-houses of Fort Washington, alike in Brooklyn's old brownst.one houses and,iri the tenements of Bronx, it runs continuously in the background of daily life. No European could be guilty in the same degree of that • major.' misdemeanour "keeping the set on," says a writer in the "Manchester Guardian." However, before long it is impossible to distinguish the part scored for radio in a sound symphony which includes the shriek of tho. Elevated, the rattling 'of ancient trolley-cars, the clatter of the Subway, and the angry hooting of motorists who have never heard of Mr. Hore-Belisha. .. Escape from noise I found, of all places, in Radio ■ City itself, «is studios are sound-proof, and American broadcasting "executives," unlike the English, do not have a loud-speaker as part of. their furniture. Only when you get inside and talk to people do you realise that there is something "on the air" besides variety orchestras and dance bands, for it is to these that the New Yorker appears to listen from breakfast-time to four in the morning. Actually "popular" music occupies about 45 per cent, of programme space, PROGRAMME BUILDING. The initiative and independence of tiie English programme-builder, who often devises, casts, and produces a show on his own, are unknown in the broadcasting houses of the United States. Many cooks help to stir. First of all, the business chief, sponsor-to-be, has an idea. He takes it to his advertising agency. It probably has no radio department. Another agency, specialising in wireless programmes, is invited to co-operate. But before the programme is written a time and stations for it, including the choice of a local or national network, must be allotted. Publicity staff from the broadcasting company, always an enormous department, are taken into conference. Then the experts sit round to prepare the show. Pride of place must go, naturally, to the advertising ,motif. At last the producer is handed a script and collects his actors, but it is liable to alteration by any one of the interested parties up to the time of transmission. The result is a programme which, in English ears, often sounds muddled-and formless. . ' ' I listened to a highly recommended programme called "World Peaceways," which is one of this autumn's successes. It resembled nothing so much as a "three-decker" sandwich. Layers of peace propaganda and of advertisement (for a firm of chemists) were divided by thick slices of entertainment. An impassioned speech by an aged senator was immediately followed by a rendering of "La Donna c Mobile" from a famous operatic tenor; to this succeeded a dramatised incident from "Paths of Glory," in which two actors "died" realistically. before the microphone, the whole being neatly rounded by some popular choruses from a mixed choir. The linking material provided for the announcer made an unfortunate attempt to persuade us that these ill-assorted items fell into a natural; unity. / . , j PRIMITIVE TECHNIQUE.. This was in many ways typical of the higher-class entertainment provided by American stations, in its splitsecond timing, its method of presentation, the diversity of its material, and especially because it took place in a single studio before an .audience. Most programmes have an audience to give atmosphere. All take place in the same room. The use of dramatic con_trol panels, by which, in this country, producers, isolated from their players, mix sound and speech through several channels and conduct the acting by means of lights, is, almost unknown in the United States. The sponsor's influence can again be traced; he wants to see all that is going on, so he watches and listens from behind a glass wall while the producer gesticu-. lates from another glass-lined gallery at announcer, orchestra, actors, singers, and effectsmen. who elbow each other at one of' three or four microphones. It is hard to believe that radio producers, if they had their way, would be content with'this primitive technique. It makes any subtlety in presentation, and especially in voice perspectives, impossible. ... , . ■ It is claimed for American announcers that they have solved the problem of the relation between; broadcaster and listener. Certainly their effort to "present" everything is,intensive; they act as "barkers," pushing the show across with unflagging :energy. But imagine this- declamatory style (delivered invariably at1 a distance of two or three feet from the microphone, instead of the few inches which separate the European ■ announcer from his instrument).applied to every item, whether it be church service or variety performance! Something is to be said for both habits; the American is vital where the English is sometimes spiritless; the English is pleasantly intimate where the American- is tiresomely rhetorical. NEWS. .'■,.-. Radio news in the United States has none of the liberty it has in England, though it is often more vividly presented. After a lengthy period in which the radio stations and the newspapers were openly competitive, which they have never been here, an agreement was reached, partly because the radio networks found, news-gathering too expensive, partly because the newspapers were scared of long news broadcasts. This agreement was entirely one-sided, permitting the radio corporations only one thousand words of news a day, in two five-minute periods, the material being supplied direct by the agencies. The pact was broken as soon as made; now special agencies exist for supplying radio news, and sponsors are bidding high for the right to broadcast news. Still, the position is far from satisfactory. ■ The censorship of the advertiser is worse than that of the agencies. The latter thought only of newspaper circulations; the former, if' he is an oil company, and this winter one news sponsor at least is, may have special reasons for editing European news! ; . Americans are particularly fond of their news commentators, who customarily follow the news itself, and the influence of these journalists/whose comments, as they, too, are sponsored, are also suspect, is as powerful,.among air classes, as it is dangerous. During the period of the Italo-Abyssinian dispute they have, remembering their Middle West audience, consistently belittled Geneva and vilified British policy. • ' . SPECTACLE. There remains outside broadcasting, which is the greatest achievement'of American radio, whether of sporting events or of national ceremonies. The handling of the. Baer-Louis fight, for instance, was a lesson in perfection.

Two commentators were used, one covering the fight itself, who never missed a" single blow and yet never became incoherent, the other taking over between rounds, and giving a brilliant sketch of the- scene outside the ring. England has yet to find such columnists of the air. The custom of dividing responsibility is extended, on a spectacular occasion, to as many as twelve commentators, in the air, on the ground, mobile as well as static, each taking two or three'minutes at-a • time, a practice which might be worth . adopting, since it lends variety • and avoids those painful gaps when .« single commentator lacks inspiration. It is these spontaneous broadcasts^l it may be of a football match or it may ' be.^ of the opening of Congress—that , prove not only that'• .the." : American [ idiom, in its terseness, its alert similes, . its pictorial quality, and the personal- , ityof its accents, is a live language, E but that it is one apt for radio. One ; great merit of American broadcasting . is that, it is helping to create, a new r oral tradition in speech. ■■-,■■