Education by radio (1931-)

broadcasting is time; a concert sent from New York at one o'clock Thursday on a spring night is heard in San Francisco on Wednesday night, in Poland on Thurs- day afternoon, in New Zealand on Fri- day, and in the Argentine in the autumn —all within one second. Exclusive agreements —The aver- age listener has no idea of the elaborate system of land lines, high-power trans- mitters, costly receiving stations that bring him a foreign rebroadcast. The hookup may require half a dozen govern- ment or private telephone links abroad, many of which have had to be recon- structed for broadcasting purposes. All this is costly. If the broadcasting com- pany has pioneered in the complicated negotiations for such hookups, it natu- rally tries to establish a preferential posi- tion. If it has supplied capital abroad for the necessary equipment, it naturally asks exclusive rights. Exclusive agree- ments . . . have shown a singular tendency to turn into stone walls between nations. The spectacle of the Foreign Minister of Germany compelled to go outside his own country in order to find the technical facilities for an invited broadcast illustrates a difficulty created for internationalism by these exclusive agreements. Overemphasizing home programs •—The argument of technical difficulties is coupled with the broadcasters' belief in the superior quality of the home pro- gram. Asking at a New York broadcast- ing headquarters "why so little Europe?" you are told "Americans are so accus- tomed to good programs that they will not stand for the inferior quality of Euro- pean broadcasts." Europeans cling to antiquated transmitters and "won't co- operate technically; they stick to long waves; we want short waves." The radio engineers give the impression that the longs are a sort of backwoods area while the shorts are the realm of the future. . If you travel on to London and ask broadcasters there why they have so few American or Continental rebroadcasts, you are told that the standard of British broadcasting is so far ahead that "we doubt our people do much listening now to foreign stations." As for American commercial programs "we've had some"; and "why should we erect shortwave directional antennae to reach America, merely to have our programs pirated by stations there?" Carrying the inquiry to Paris, broad- casters assure you that French offerings are now of such fineness and variety that "we get a volume of mail from foreign listeners, especially British." In Berlin German broadcasters insist that "to in- terest our listeners in foreign things we THE AMERICAN POLICY o£ ad- vertising on the air is a war breeder. The efforts of our power-radio trust to force this American advertising onto for- eign peoples, whose radio is free from advertising, inten- sify jealousies. Commercial greed—a moving cause in many wars—cannot be trusted with this new giant in the hands of mad ambition. If citi- zens who genuinely desire a peaceful world have vision, they will join in the eflforts to free the air and keep it free fr6m advertising. — J. E. M. have to send out our own traveling mic- rophone to create worthwhile programs beyond our borders." . . . After three thousand miles of travel you come to the conclusion that they cannot all be right. You discover heretics in every station who listen fre- quently abroad and who smile slightly at the official reasons. When broadcasters speak of quality they refer not so much to faint reception due to long-distance transmission but rather to the low program standards of the benighted alien. The broadcasting authorities, confused by the conflicting opinions of engineers, musicians, and ora- tors, have scarcely arrived at a standard of any kind for home programs, let alone a standard for checking up on the quality of productions originating thousands of miles away. Yet the quality excuse every- where deprives listeners of their chance at foreign programs. Organized monotony? —Protest at radio program monotony is constant. .America has some six hundred stations, puts more money and effort into broad- casting than the rest of the world, has the best there is and a great deal of the worst, and is the originator of most of the new forms of the art. And yet—and yet—"is the result simply an organized monotony?" Listeners complain of the same stunt or dance, the same tomtom or croon, on every wavelength. The variety of competitive production tends to a curious sameness especially when the en- tertainment is taken over by a sponsor who must have a sure-fire hit to risk his money. He gives the public "what it wants" but the demand for programs from Europe and the rest of the world does not cease. Europe's two hundred stations, taken together, offer greater variety. With a good set you can make fascinating jour- neys by radio, tho you find the air sur- prisingly crowded and ripped with gov- ernment stations' code messages to fleets and colonies. You can pick up the music box signal of Budapest, the nightingale note used by Italian stations, the shrill bell of Fecamp, or the deep boom of Strasbourg, the Give akt of Baltic sta- tions, the Hicr sind of German, the Dub- lin Radio Ath Cliath e seo and the A-ah- hota see-a-ta of Madrid. You have opera, religious services, radio playlets, and a good deal of debate. Stations offer to make you a linguist, and you can over- hear English, French, and German being taught in unintelligible tongues. Or you can switch to the cabarets of twenty lands, sounding much alike. And yet—in this European play- ground and international university no- table lacks soon appear. Talks on current politics are few and thin; many siations ban them outright. The pungent com- ment of a William Hard is not for Europe. No illuminating controversial forums exist such as are broadcast by our organizations like the Foreign Policy Association. News communiques tend to be bare, arid, and suggestive of official points of view or semi-official news agencies. The suspicion dawns that the national monotony complained of in America bothers Europe as well. Rebroadcasts of other countries' programs are rarer even than with us. No one knows the propor- tion of listeners with sets capable of fish- ing for their own foreign programs where they please in Europe, but it is probably small. Europe's broadcasters take pride in catering to the small receiver and in "not promoting the sale of costly sets"^ a circumstance which increases the con- trol of the broadcaster. The mass of lis- teners do not hear any programs e.xcept those of their nearest home stations. Like the American public, they are re- stricted for their international radio to home station rebroadcasts. European radio fears—The truth is that European broadcasters are afraid, .^t the start government laid hands on the radio to control it, as in the past they took charge of telegraphs and telephones, and frequently of railways, all "elements of the national defense." Some countries