Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1948)

Miracle in Cuba (Continued from page 23) columnists and advertising people on this trip to Cuba. The letter was signed "Goar Mestre"— a name I'd never heard before. Well, I told my son about it and I wrote my daughter and they were as amazed as I. All that week while I was making a new dress to wear and remodeling a hat that had once belonged to my daughter, I had to keep telling myself over and over again that I was going to fly. That's as far as I could get in my mind. After that, I didn't know. The flight, I felt, would be my biggest thrill and it was, indeed, exciting. But other things happened that were just as wonderful as the flight. I loved every minute I spent in the air — even when we hit some head winds over Florida and the plane bucked like a bronco. What I couldn't understand was how the rest of the people in the plane — the newspaper and magazine people and the advertising men — could sleep or play cards. If I'm 10,000 feet off the ground I want to know about it, to be aware of every second. IT WAS cold when we left New York * and I had worn my cape and hat. But we came down into a warm tropical night and I just breathed in that soft air and looked at the palm trees and said to myself, "I'm in Cuba. Somehow a miracle has happened. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know who Goar Mestre is but I'm here." It was wonderful. Of course I met Goar Mestre very soon, along with his beautiful Argentinian wife. He is thirty-five years old and a fourth-generation Cuban. He was educated in America. Is a Yale graduate, in fact. For quite a while he had the controlling interest in the Cuban network CMQ. Then he decided that it would be a wonderful thing for Cuba if he built a place comparable to our Radio City. He did just that. It's called Radiocentro and it's one of the most beautiful and modern buildings you ever saw. It cost three million dollars. In the building is a big movie theater, all the CMQ studios — there are eleven of them — two restaurants, a roof night club, a bank, fourteen stores of various kinds, an auto showroom and seven floors of offices. I found out that the reason the man who had first talked to me on the telephone had laughed when I told him what I thought of disc jockeys was that Mr. Mestre was determined there would be no disc jockeys on his Cuban network. My comment on them might have been what got me chosen as a typical American radio listener. No, there are no disc jockeys on CMQ but, and I think this is very funny, you know what the Cubans and the Mexicans and the South Americans (CMQ is heard all over the Latin American countries) love? Daytime dramas. About sixty percent of the eighteenhour day of radio is devoted to these dramatic shows. They're in Spanish, of course, and they're like our Joyce Jordan and Life Can Be Beautiful and others except with a difference. The plots are more torrid than ours and there is much more about love. That's the Cuban temperament. If you've ever been to a radio broadcast in the United States (I have several times) you'll remember that the sponsor's booth, which you can see from the place where the spectators sit, is a small booth seating only ten or fifteen people. But that's not how it is in Cuba. The sponsor's booth seats a hundred because a Cuban sponsor likes to bring his entire family and the family's family. There is a private entrance to the booth so all these people won't have to go through the studio. And here's the reason for that. Cubans are notorious for being late and Mr. Mestre can't have people — even if they have bought time on the air — trailing through the studio while a program is going on. While I'm on the subject of the Cubans having so little sense of time I'd like to tell you about the Radio Clock or Radio Reloj, as it is called down there. This is a broadcast in a separate studio and it goes for the eighteen hours a day that the network is on the air. It's a mechanical device and it sounds like the ticking of a metronome. Two men are in the studio constantly because every minute is divided into three periods of twenty seconds each. And each twenty seconds is then divided into five seconds of news, five seconds of commercials and five seconds for telling the time. Mr. Mestre said, "In this way we hope the Cubans will be on time for their appointments." But I'm afraid that is just a dream for during the four days I was in Cuba nobody was on time for anything anywhere, Radio Reloj or not! These Latin Americans may be late but they're certainly not lazy. I learned later that we had arrived a day before we were "expected, due to some trouble about getting the plane. So that first day when we saw Radiocentro it was not landscaped. There were trucks there with greenery and plants and small trees but no planting at all had been done. Goodness knows what happened but the next day when we arrived for the official dedication ceremony the grounds around the beautiful building were green and growing. Those men must have worked all night. This is the kind of thing you expect in the United States but not in Cuba. THE entire building and the studios are as up-to-date as any radio station anywhere. The doors are three-and-ahalf inches thick of solid mahogany and remember I'm a good carpenter and such things appeal to me. The offices are like a picture, beautifully decorated in chartreuse, with white leather chairs and desks of native wood in satin finish. The control rooms are as big as those at the National Broadcasting Company in the United States. Mr. Mestre's architects planned the lobby and all the studios so that everybody can see everybody else. The Cubans practically demand this. 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