Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1962)

DATELINE: Africa by Jerry M. Landay, news director, WINS New York Portable radios bring light to the Dark Continent Historians will record Africa's sweeping transition from foreign domination to independence as one of the landmarks of the 20th Century. Africans will in large measure owe their freedom and their newly found place in the world to two rather singular technological developments — the dry cell battery and the transistor. The bright innovators who married the two into the compact high-powered radio did more than create a fantastically successful new product for the marketplace. Their miracle of miniaturization has become a mighty instrument of quiet revolution. And nowhere is its power more evident than in Africa, where pocket-size radio is helping reshape a king-size continent. More specifically, the battery-powered portable offers leaders of Africa's newly independent countries the only practical means of reaching much of their people most of the time. National unity is essential to the consolidation of Africa's newly created democratic governments. But "uniting" is easier said than done in nations where most of the people neither read nor write — where for centuries the leading authority has not been a central government but rather the chief of the local tribe — where citizens live in isolated pockets separated from the capital by miles of untamed bush, bad road, or, more often, no road at all. The Instant Answer ■ The compact portable has supplied the instant answer to the problems of Africa's "instant independence." It's cheap, easy to distribute, supplies an immediate link between the leaders and their citizens. And electric power to operate it is as handy as the nearest general store, which always has a supply of fresh batteries on hand. The government-run radio station, a standard fixture in vir tually every African capital, supplies the rest. Portable radios in the African bush not only pick up the government station, but are bombarded by short-wave transmissions from the Voice of America, Radio Moscow, Radio Peiping, and Nasser's Radio Cairo. One Peace Corps volunteer told me of a tribal chief deep in the Tanganyika bush. The chief lived in a mud hut, spoke only broken English, and continued to use a witch doctor to cure his jungle ills. But there sat his portable radio on a rickety table in the center of the hut. Every evening after dinner, he and selected members of his family, along with the tribal elders, listen for several hours — first to one station, then to another. The chief rarely has left his village, but he knows the issues of the cold war, knows who Kennedy, Khrushchev, MacMillan and Mao-tseTung are, and knows what they are doing, saying, and thinking. Evening Ritual ■ I spent several days visiting a tiny isolated mountainside camp in southern Tanganyika. Every evening, the ritual is the same. Peace Corps volunteer Gerry Faust of Holton, Kan., clears the empty dishes off the wooden table in the hut, and replaces them with a shortwave battery transistor radio. A member of Faust's three-man African road crew stirs up the wood fire. All four plant their chairs in the direction of the beautiful African sunset. Then, someone turns on the radio, fussing with the dial until the signal from TBC, the government-run radio station in the capital of Dar es Salaam, comes in loud and clear. For the next several hours, the loudspeaker commands an empathy, a fascination, an excited wonder from the audience of three Africans. Jerry Landay, news director, WINS New York, first joined the Westinghouse organization in 1955 as news director at KDKA Pittsburgh. In 1958, he moved to WBZ Boston, and moved again in 1960 to WBC's Washington news bureau. In August 1962, he became news director of WINS. Mr. Landay recently completed a one-month, 20,000 mile tour of Africa, where he covered the Peace Corps for a WBC radio documentary series, "Africa: Peace Corps Plus One," now on WBC stations. For the two nights I stayed at Faust's camp, I was fascinated by the Africans' basic and wondrous love affair with the loudspeaker. When it played music to them, they sang with it and kept time with their feet. When it joked with them, they laughed and shouted back. When it told them of big news events in their own capital, or in Washington, London and Moscow, they nodded approvingly or disapprovingly, or exchanged whispered comments or arguments. And when it sang to them of the glorious wonders of Aspro. the popular local reliever-of-pain-and-everything-else, they sang the words of the jingle in unison. Plug On The World ■ To the average African, radio is far more than a miraculous innovation in mass communications. It is his first exposure to any medium of mass communication. Isolated by miles of bush and bad roads, he is getting his first chance to plug into the world which he has become increasingly, if but dimly, aware of in recent years. With the coming of independence, he has found radio to be his only dependable way of tying into the circuit of events in his own country which make his newfound freedom meaningful. To his leaders, radio is the only way of tying the citizen speedily and quickly into national policies, decisions, and issues — of breaking down tribal barriers ■ — of creating a cohesive national consciousness and patriotism necessary to consolidate the independence which is so newly won. TBC, the Tanganyika Broadcasting Corporation, typifies the role of radio in the new African nations. Government-run, it puts the program stress on information and education. Of its Swahili service, 60% is devoted to news and related current affairs presentations, educational, instructional, and cultural programs. The news schedule is currently being expanded. Popular and traditional music are programmed the other 40% of the schedule. In addition to national and international news summaries, the informational service includes TBC Magazine, a roundup of the week's top news stories, and From Our Gardens, which introduces bush farmers to land cultivation, planting, and marketing. Radios have been placed in schools in the bush areas, over which students are given daily instruction in English, history, geography, general science and current affairs. Personal Involvement ■ One of TBC's 84 (INTERNATIONAL) BROADCASTING, December 17, 1962