Broadcasting (Oct 1931-Dec 1932)

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The RADIO BOOK SHELF IROADCASTDINie of THE NEWS MAGAZINE THE FIFTH ESTATE MARTIN CODEL, Editor SOL TAISHOFF, Managing Editor F. GAITHER TAYLOR, « Advertising Manager Executive and Editorial Offices: National Press Building, Washington, D. C. Subscription Priee: $3.00 a Year 15c a Copy Copyright, 1931, by Broadcasting Publications, Inc. Published Semi ■ Monthly by BROADCASTING PUBLICATIONS, Inc. • National Press Building Washington, D. C. Metropolitan 1786 We Make Our Bow "Edmund Burke said that there were Three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters Gallery yonder there sat a 'Fourth Estate' more important far than them all." — Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. AND now, Radio! Who is there to gainsay its rightful status as the Fifth Estate? Powerful medium for the conveyance of intelligence and entertainment to the masses, Radio Broadcasting has come to take its place alongside "the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal, the Commons and the Press" to whom the redoubtable Burke alluded in one of his unpublished nights of oratory. Radio as the mouthpiece of all the other Estates occupies a peculiar position of its own in American life. It furnishes all of man's other high Estates voices that reach far beyond their cloistered chambers, their limited social circles, their sectional constituencies and their circulation areas. But beyond all that, it brings new cheer, new intelligence, new light to the multitudes in providing all the many and diversified forms of education and entertainment that the human ear can convey to the mind. Soon sight will be added to radio's voice; when and how, it is too soon to say, but that it will the best minds of radio are agreed. All this broadcasting does in this country while sustaining itself as an economic entity, without the direct aid or subsidy of government. It does all this, under the American scheme, while lending new stimulus to business by making available to business a new vocal medium of sales approach. It does all this, we believe, without encroaching upon, but rather in close cooperation with, the other realms of education, entertainment and business. Broadcasting makes it bow firm in its belief in the American system of radio. With all its youthful faults, Radio by the American Plan still expresses a certain genius of the American people — the genius of free enterprise. It would be idle here to expatiate upon the blessings, the faults and the future hopes of radio. The columns of Broadcasting will be devoted to the news of radio, particularly to bringing the various elements that make up this great art and industry to a greater awareness of another. Broadcasting intends to report, fairly and accurately, the thoughts and the activities that motivate the field of broadcasting and the men who are guiding and administering broadcasting. To the American system of free, competitive and self-sustaining radio enterprise, this new publication, accordingly, is dedicated. The N. A. B. Convention POWERFUL opposition from all sorts of misguided interests faces American broadcasting. To those who would know more about the "danger signals ahead" of broadcasting, both external and internal, we commend the interesting and succinct statement in this issue by Dr. Henry A. Bellows. To those who want to discuss them further with the industry's best minds, we commend attendance at the National Association of Broadcasters' ninth annual convention in Detroit, October 26, 27 and 28, also the subject of an article in this issue by Philip G. Loucks, the association's capable youngmanaging director who in less than a year lifted that organization from a state of desuetude to real and aggressive activity and performance. It is needless to expand here upon the virtues of organization; nearly every other industry has an organization to guide it in handling problems common to all. Broadcasting, hardly out of the swaddling clothes stage, needs organization and guidance from within now more than ever in the few years since it came into its own as an economic as well as a social entity. Your Forum FRANKLY, the editors of Broadcasting in this issue and in the columns of succeeding issues intend to play nobody's "game" but that of the broadcasting industry as a whole. This periodical has not been conceived as the spokesman for any one network, any one station, any one agency or any particular group. Broadcasting is designed to be a journal of news and information. Beyond that its editors also want to make it the forum of the entire industry — your forum. Accordingly, they invite your comments and suggestions and they solicit your letters for publication, provided only that those letters bear bona fide signatures and convey messages that are significant to the broadcasting fraternity as a whole. Shall Rates Be Fixed? NOW comes the proposition to fix and regulate broadcasting rates. It is plain that, the industry being so young, such a step would only muddle broadcasting. The railroads existed for nearly half a century before they were subjected to rate regulation. During that time they were aided by land grants and right of way concessions from the Government. Broadcasting is only in its eleventh year, and derives no support or subsidy from government. We admit that its progress has been meteoric, but we submit that the time is not yet for rate regulation. IN THE FOREWORD to Dr. Frank Arnold's new book ("Broadcast Advertising, The Fourth Dimension," John Wiley & Sons, New York, $3) the late Dr. H. P. Davis says: "Broadcast advertising is modernity's medium of business expression. It has made industry articulate. American business men, because of radio, are provided with a latchkey to nearly every home in the United States. They are only asked to conduct themselves as good-mannered guests." /How the business man can use radio and how radio can serve business are recounted in interesting fashion by the director of development of NBC. Dr. Arnold's book is the first on this subject since Edgar Felix published his book for advertisers, station managers, and broadcasting artists ("Using Radio in Sales Promotion," McGraw Hill Book Co., New York) in 1927. Dr. Arnold's book not only traces the early days of broadcasting, but discusses such subjects as radio circulation, broadcast advertising technique, planning a broadcast campaign, commercial credits, broadcasting and advertising agency, and radio from the public viewpoint. He also ventures certain predictions, among them that ten years will see visual and audible radio combined to revolutionize the intellectual and business life of the world community. MODESTLY, the authors of "How to Write for Radio" (Longmans, Green and Co., New York, $3) preface their book by stating that "writing for radio is still in its infancy and that doubtless, within five years, this book will be regarded as a radio primer." As far as they go, however, Katherine Seymour, an NBC continuity editor, and J. T. W. Martin, radio writer for Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne, the co-authors, cover the fundamentals of radio writing and producing in interesting and instructive fashion. This is a book that deserves the close scrutiny of every person in station or agency who prepares copy for the microphone. This book is a worthy supplement for the library that already contains Peter Dixon's "Radio Writing" (The Century Co., New York, $2.50) in which the author and lead of NBC's "Raising Junior" takes would-be writers for the radio into the studio to tell them the basic things they ought to know about broadcasting. A COMPREHENSIVE analysis of the habits and preferences of summer radio audiences in and around Philadelphia has been prepared for WCAU, Philadelphia, by Herman S. Hettinger and Richard R. Mead, of the University of Pennsylvania faculty. The study has many points of application to other territories, and is one of a series of studios to be made of the "seasonal behaviour" of audiences. CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, Washington, D. C, has published a radio law bulletin containing the texts of a recent lecture series on legal aspects of radio by Louis G. Caldwell, John W. Guider, Paul M. Segal, William Roy Vallance and Charles F. Dolle. From the Northwestern University Press, Chicago, comes a compilation of general orders of the Federal Radio Commission, reprinted from the April Journal of Radio Law of the Air Law Institute, edited by Louis G. Caldwell, Washington attorney. Page 18 BROADCASTING • October 15, 1931