Radio revue (Dec 1929-Mar 1930)

30 RADIO REVU E Mr. Average Fan Confesses REACTIONS OF A "LOW BROW that He is a "Low Brow 11 By AVERAGE FAN LIKE millions of others, throughout the country, I am a radio fan. I have been one for the past five years, when I bought my first set, and now I am just as interested and enthusiastic about radio as I was then. I still derive just as much pleasure from roaming around the dials, trying to bring in some out-of-town station, and I still get just as thoroughly disgusted as I did years ago when, after listening to what I fondly imagined was a distant station, I heard some one say "This is Station WAAT, of the Hotel Plaza, Jersey City." There are, of course, all kinds of radio fans. There is the one who likes to tear a machine apart and rebuild it again. There is the one who has his house full of sets he has built. He tells you the most wonderful stories about the distant stations he has brought in with these sets, right through WEAF, WJZ and WOR. Strangely enough these miracles always happen when he is alone and never when his friends, attracted by his yarns, gather to hear his wonderful machine. There there is the other kind, probably the most numerous of the lot : the one who knows nothing about how or why the blooming thing operates and cares just as little. All he wants is to get the programs as clearly and consistently as possible. He knows what he wants and does not care how it comes, just so he gets it. Amphfica The Ipana Troubadors , one of my Unblushingly, I confess that I like jazz. Big symphony orchestras, playing Bach er some of the other so-called old masters, bore me excessively. I have had more enjoyment out of the troubles of Amos '«' Andy than anything else on the radio. As for announcers, I used to get my greatest thrill from listening to Norman Brokenshire. Graham McNamee and Ted Husing are my favorite sports announcers. I will tune off anything else at any time to listen to Jimmy Walker. H. V. Kaltenborn has a snappy way of talking that holds my interest. Formerly favorites of mine, Roxy and Vincent Lopez lately have become too sweet to be natural. Radio has kept me at home more than ever before. It is difficult to predict what will happen when — and if — television becomes as universal """V as radio now is. S^ tion, radio frequency and all those highly technical terms are so much Greek to him. When he hears them he looks wise, pretends to take them all in, and promptly forgets all about them until he has trouble, and then he calls in an expert to get him out of his trouble. Mechanics of Radio a Mystery This latter class is the one to which I belong. The mechanics of a radio, how and why sounds emanating from some place thousands of miles away can be brought to your home and you can hear them as clearly as if they were coming from the same room, always have been to me — and probably always will be — one of the world's deepest mysteries. Experts have tried to explain it, giving me a lot of fine-sounding talk about sound waves being sent through the air and gathered up by your machine, through the transformer and converted into music or speech, but they have never made me thoroughly understand it. All 1 do know is that they come in with more or less clarity, depending upon weather conditions and the set you have. Personally, I know the difference between a screw-Foto Topics driver, a monkey wrench Favorite Dance Orchestras ;il1r' a hammer. However,