Education by Radio (1937)

Schools: Services, largely to youth, which society has decided to buy coopera¬ tively, instead of thru the dividend-bonus corporation method; this service con¬ sists of implanting in newcomers sufficient of our curious habits and customs to warrant the admission of these newcomers to the great American social and pleasure club. Propaganda: Organization and distribution of material and acts undertaken to bias public attitude and reaction to problems facing society. Publicity: Use of various channels of information to familiarize the public with some plan, product, or activity, for example, a bond issue which a school board wants passed. Public relations: Concerns the operations of an institution or organization to accomplish its objectives with utmost internal but more particularly external harmony. Sometimes those who engage in publicity call themselves public relations counsels in order to charge more for their services. Radio station: A speculative, and to date, generally a profitable venture in real estate. Having obtained a public utility license to a wavelength by purchase or vague promises to the Federal Communications Commission, the speculator rents some rooms, caretakers, and some wires to advertising agencies which handle accounts for merchants. Time, which the station owner cannot sell to an advertiser, he fills with records and educational programs for which he pays little or nothing and cares less. Exception: Some stations are acquired by newspaper proprietors in order to stifle the radio so it will not compete with the newspaper business. Wavelength: A curious electromagnetic impulse, limited in variety, owned by the people of the United States. Wavelengths are given to commercial speculators by the Federal Communications Commission on condition that the speculators come back every six months and say, “Please, may I have it for six months more?’’ The Commission makes these six months gifts of public property on condition that the speculator use the gift in, as the law says, “the public interest, con¬ venience, and necessity.” But this is not as difficult a requirement as it may sound because neither the Commission nor Congress nor anyone else has decided what it means. Speculators take these gifts of public property and resell them to other speculators at handsome prices — sometimes more than $1,000,000. Radio broadcasting: This is one of the most absurd and inefficient methods by which sane persons have ever tried to communicate with one another. It is like trying to catch and hold the attention of a million blind persons, each of whom is occupied with something else at the time. It is such an inefficient method of communication that, as a rule, only a combination of skilled writers, skilled actors, and a large orchestra can effectively communicate with large numbers of listeners. And yet the unique distinction of radio, the ability to communicate with millions, instantaneously, in their own homes, is so desired by merchants and citizens them¬ selves, that ways have been found to overcome the inefficiencies inherent in this form of communication. Limitations of radio broadcasting have compelled its use chiefly as a musical background for life and for short, swift, window-shopper units of information such as news, gags, and clambakes. Clambakes are variety programs. Radio broadcasting is particularly well adapted to the educational task of stimulating intellectual and cukural activities, but it has not been used for this purpose extensively for two reasons: first, because educators have not been able to collect or allocate sufficient funds to buy the skill necessary to use this queer method of communication; second, because advertisers don’t want the think¬ ing of listeners diverted into channels which might make them forget about the product advertised. Local station: A radio Station licensed to use a wavelength to serve the particular needs of local citizens, but whose owner has usually found it more profitable and a lot less trouble to be a chain store for a New York or Chicago distributor. Network broadcasting: A scheme which was originally planned to promote the sale of tubes and radio sets thru the distribution to local outlets of pro¬ grams created in New York and Chicago, which, it was thought, large numbers of people would like to hear. It soon became evident that assembling a network of stations for an advertising agency desiring national coverage was more profit¬ able than the sale of tubes. Therefore the companies organizing the networks have become brokers between local distributors — radio stations — and national advertis¬ ing agencies who create programs for the benefit of their clients. At present the scheme is so organized that local stations have to take an advertising agency pro¬ gram whether they want to or not and the advertisers take up practically all the time most adapted to communicating with the public. The local distributor, on the other hand, is under no compulsion to take a non-advertising program, such as an educational program, so when national education programs are offered to him the local distributor frequently sells that time to a local advertiser if he can. This is called operating radio stations in the public interest. Those, my friends, are the definitions of the man from Mars who tries to be exact and truthful. You will at once recognize that his unfamiliarity with earthly affairs and his lack of proper background have led him to make some definitions with which you and I cannot agree. But if we don’t accept his definitions, we can proceed to make our own. A BILL has been introduced into the State Legislature of California for the construction of two 50,000 watt broadcasting stations to pro¬ vide adequate radio broadcasting facilities for the extension division of the University of California. The bill provides that one station shall be located on the campus at Berkeley and the other on the campus at Los Angeles. Section 3 of the bill states that “the operation of said stations shall be under the supervision and control of the extension divi¬ sion of the university. The division shall prepare and broadcast a curriculum of education benefi¬ cial to those citizens who are unable to partake of the benefits afforded by actual attendance at a university. The division shall arrange to broad¬ cast. directly or by remote control from various cities of the state, public debates and discussions on matters of vital interest to the people of the state of California. They may also arrange for the broadcast of such other matters and programs as they shall deem to be of educational or cultural value." While no request for construction permits has been submitted to the Federal Communications Commission as yet, this expression of interest in educational broadcasting for Californians is timely and worthy of recording. O The eighth annual institute for EDUCATION BY RADIO will be held in Columbus, Ohio, May 3-5. Features of the Insti¬ tute this year will be a broadcast by Dr. Joseph E. Maddy, University of Michigan, on his weekly band lesson, an address on “Radio’s Responsibility for National Culture” by Gladstone Murray, gen¬ eral manager of the Canadian Broadcasting Cor¬ poration, the first American exhibition of record¬ ings of educational radio, programs, and an address by Dr. John W. Studebaker, U. S. Commisioner of Education, on “The Governments’ Responsibility for Educational Broadcasting.” I. Keith Tyler of the Bureau of Educational Research, Ohio State University, Columbus, is in charge of arrange¬ ments for the Institute, which will bring together scores of leaders in radio, representing educational institutions and their radio stations, the chains, and commercial stations, as well as governmental agencies concerned with radio. 9 The school executive for March 1937 contains an article on “The Use of Radio in the Schools” by Dr. Arthur G. Crane. In his article Dr. Crane outlines a detailed program of experimentation designed to show school teachers and administrators how effective radio can be as a tool with which to improve teaching. Dr. Crane describes the kind of demonstration which he be¬ lieves will do as much for education by radio as Lindbergh’s solo flight over the Atlantic did for aviation. 9 ANNING S. PRALL has been reappointed by * President Roosevelt to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission for another year. His previous appointment expired March 11.