The Evening Star TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1923. BROADCASTING PROBLEMS.

Evening Star, Issue 18263, 1 May 1923, Page 4

The Evening Star TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1923. BROADCASTING PROBLEMS.

Broadcasting in Britain, 'where the recreation ban been developed much more than in this country, is partaking the experience ol all new discoveries that promise to bo more than a .passing vogue. It is causing alarm to vested interests. According to°a cable message which wo published yesterday, tho entertainment industry has openly avowed its opposition to the wireless broadcasting of plays, music, and eongs <qs being prejudicial to places of entertainment. A resolution to that effect has been passed by a committee representing places of amusement, owners of copyright, concert promoters, and artists. The reason for their hostility is very apparent. What is tho use, tho entrepreneur is tempted to ask, of hiring halls at a great expense and paying high salaries to actors or singers, so that a profit may ho Blade from the entertainment of the public, if concerts or dramatic performances os good aa any which they can give can be heard by thousands more people than the buildings would hold for the less trouble of .“listening in { ” practically without any

charge at all? And if people should ceaso to go to plays and concerts because they can enjoy them so much more easily, as well as more cheaply, in their own homes, a large proportion of actors and singers, as well as of promoters, would bo in danger of finding their occupation gone. A few dozen of the best might servo for all the needs of broadcasting for a population of millions. The story-writer may also l)o affected. If his best things can ho given in readings to hearers from London to Glasgow at one time, will tho samo number of people buy copies of his book, on which ho would receive a royalty? Even the Churches have been troubled by this new discovery. There have been hints of their anxiety in New Zealand. Will people go to church, oven in their present numbers, when they can hear the whole service by their fireside? And if they refrain from going, apart from spiritual aspects that are involved, what would become of the Church collections, by which both pastors and the places of religion are supported? For those who are most concerned these may be troublous questions. The promoters of entertainments may declare their opposition to broadcasting. Any idea that they can stop it Would he as vain as that Dame Partington’s broom should hold back the ocean. The world will not remain in any particular rut for all the vested interests that have claims upon it. Broadcasting has come to our progressive world, and all the signs are that it has come to grow and to stay. That is not to say that, after its first shock, it will do any particular harm to interests that are now disquieted by it. The fear that it will do so rests entirely, we believe, upon a false assumption. It depends on a lack of faith in the arts and ministries that are more likely to be helped mightily by their new extension than destroyed in their original freshness. The broadcasting programmes in London are amazingly good. Each day wo can read them in the London ‘Times.’ To take a typical day: At 5 p.m., we there learn, Mr P. J. Gould will read one of his short stories. Mr P. J. Gould, it is plain, has no fears for the effect upon his royalties. If it was someone else’s short stories that he should choose to read, fears might bo provoked; but that is by the way. Six o’clock hears the children’s “bedtime stories.” Seven is given to “news.” At short intervals thereafter there are concerts, leading artists and an orchestra participating. At 9 p.m. Lord Bobert Cecil gives an address on ‘ The Price of Peace,’ which has probably far fewer hearers. Nine-thirty yields a new instalment of news, and at 9.50 begins the last, most elaborate concert. Tho morning papers still find readers, notwithstanding the anticipation of a proportion of their announcements, and it will be strange if, when broadcasting is less a novelty than it is at present, tho concert halls and theatres find their attendances diminished. Covont Garden holds a different theory when, the first of London places of entertainment to do so, it provides itself for tho broadcasting of its operas as they are produced. It believes evidently that the desire for good music, as for all good art, is something that grows and is not lessoned by experience; that if people hear an opera from a distance they will soon want to hear it, with tho added enjoyment of seeing it, close at hand; that “listening in” will not end with such aloofness, but be tho best inducement to “silting in.”

Unless the development of broadcasting is to belie that of all the other new arts which are extensions, but can never bo full equivalents, of original ones, Coyent Garden is right. No one thinks less of a good drama, humanly acted, because ho has seen it performed by shadows without a voice. The picture theatres can give us their own version of 1 The Three Musketeers’ or ‘Quo Vadis,’ but they can never give us anything half so good as the hook. Their best service is performed when they send seers of the faint copy to the original, or in another role. It was feared in America that the broadcasting of gramophone music would cause kss°demand to be made for the records themselves; but experience showed that the result was an increased demand alike for the records and machines. And so it is likely to be with the bulk of broadcasting. The man who will not go to church at the present time would be unlikely to hear a sermon “listening in.” And the man who acquires a liking for any form of art or service through hearing it from a distance will be impatient till he can hear it at closer quarters. Tire story-writer should receive his royalty from the broadcasting company as he would from sales. The British Company can afford to pay it, since, unlike the companies in New Zealand which receive nothing, at tno present stage, for tho purely experimental concerts they provide except an advertisement that may aid them to sell their appliances, a fee from tho holders of “listening in” apparatus equal to the one which it keeps for itself is paid by the British Government to tho disseminators of “wireless.”- But the book which is worth its price will find larger, not smaller, sales when broadcasting to thousands of hearers gives samples of it which cannot bo more than samples.