Education by Radio (1932)

EDUCATION BY RADIO VOLUME 2. NUMBER 19. JUNE 9. 1932 NEXT ISSUE. JUNE 23. 1932 An Appeal to Canada Lee DeForest I have been intimately connected with radio for more than thirty years. After fundamental technical work, which laid the foundation for the modern radio industry, I be¬ gan broadcasting. In New York as early as 1910, by means of a temporary radio-telephone transmitter on the top of the Metropolitan Opera House and a microphone placed among the footlights of the stage, I put the living voice of Caruso on the air. In 1916, four years before Westinghouse gave the public a similar service, my Highbridge station broadcast the returns of our presidential election. We also maintained at that time a thrice-weekly concert service, using the records of the Columbia Phonograph Company. The war, of course, interrupted private broadcasting, but we resumed in 1919 and moved our transmitter downtown to the heart of the theatrical district where artists could be easily brought to the microphone. We had hardly gotten under way in the new location when the federal radio inspector of that district cancelled our license on the bizarre theory, then cur¬ rent in official circles, that there was “no room in the ether for entertainment.” So our transmitter took another journey and, finally installed in the stage loft of the California Theater in San Francisco, daily broadcast orchestral concerts. I am, therefore, no novice in radio. It is not unnatural that, having fathered broadcasting, I should, like any parent, cherish high hopes for my offspring. In 1923, on the occasion of Station WOR’s first anniversary, I hailed this new instrumentality as a beneficent force in civilization with potentialities which could only be compared to those initiated five centuries ago by the art of printing. I saw it as a noble agency for the diffusion of education and culture. I saw it as a boundless source of pleasure for the multitude. I saw it as a means of uniting the nations of the earth in closer bonds, as the herald of worldwide peace. So much for the dream. The reality you know. Within the span of a few years we in the United States have seen broad¬ casting so debased by commercial advertising that many a householder regards it as he does the brazen salesman who tries to thrust his foot in at the door. Under what the present masters of radio are pleased to call the American Plan — which is no plan whatsoever but a rank and haphazard growth that has sprung up in default of proper regulation — broadcasting is regarded as a nuisance by uncounted thousands. Radio sets here are a drug on the market. In many a home the cabinet gathers dust. Thinking people resent the moronic fare that is mostly offered them. They resent the fact that the rights of education on the air have been steadily curtailed by the insistent advertiser. They are in revolt against the policies, rooted in greed, which have made the ether a marketplace. They demand that this huckstering orgy be curbed, that they, the owners of receivingsets, whose financial stake in radio is vastly greater than that of the station owners, shall no longer be fobbed off with a vulgar, cheapjack show designed solely to coax dollars out of the pockets of the public. I well realize that good programs must be paid for, that the cost for adequate artists, network transmission, and sta¬ tion maintenance js expensive. But it has been abundantly proven here in America that the programs of the highest qual¬ ity are accompanied by the least sales talk or ballyhoo. Almost invariably this is the case. And yet such wise and efficient business organizations as the Standard Oil Company of Cali¬ fornia, Atwater Kent, and a few others, have found thru years of experience that their highclass musical programs are abund¬ antly paid for by the mere sponsoring notices which introduce and terminate these programs. This fact clearly offers, in my mind, a just and practical solution; just to the public and profitable to the sponsoring organization. Let legislators therefore be directed along this line — to prohibit all direct sales talk from broadcasting — permitting brief sponsoring notices only. The deplorable conditions which overwhelmingly exist in the United States are known to you in Canada. May I voice a hope that many Americans share? We trust that you, our neighbors across that undefended boundary line which, for a century or more, has been the world’s noblest symbol of peace, will strengthen our hands. We have faith that you, who have in so many ways set a lofty example in selfgovernment, will point the way to a wiser use of this scientific boon that we have let fall into unworthy keeping. We look to you in Canada to lead radio in North America out of the morass in which it is pitiably sunk. May Canada fulfil my early dream! — Proceed¬ ings of the Special Committee on Radio Broadcasting, Cana¬ dian House of Commons, April 13, 1932. The radio industry has maintained that broadcasting in this country is impossible without income from advertising. HThe fact is that about thirty stations are maintained by state-supported and private colleges and universities without advertising and that at least two college stations have received considerable amounts in contributions from listeners. fiHow many of the commercial stations which claim to be giving the public what it wants would dare to suggest that the public pay them for broadcasting the programs they do ! The American public never has shown any unwillingness to pay for anything that it wanted and since the broad¬ casting industry seems afraid of any suggestion to make broadcasting dependent on public financial support, there must be some question in the mind of the industry as to whether it is really giving the public what it wants. What the American buying public needs is not radio advertising but an impartial factual agency. [73]