Radio Broadcast (Nov 1926-Apr 1927)

The Listeners' Point of Vieiu Conducted by — John Wallace Who and Where the Infants Really Are In Radio WH EN EVE R we begin to feel too morbid about the headway — or non-headway — that radio is making we are cheered up considerably by a happy thought which we shall make haste to share with you. We are thoroughly sick of the phrase "in its infancy." For the last twenty years the movie industry has been assuring us that it is "in its infancy." So frequently and loudly has this phrase been repeated that it begins to take on the air of a boast rather than a well warranted apology. And, as you well know, the phrase is being constantly applied to radio with the same double entendre. So we shall not make ourself an accomplice in the crime by here repeating it ourself — even though it would fit in very nicely. Instead, we shall say that the men behind the scenes, the entrepreneurs of radio, are in their infancy. We do not mean this facetiously but literally. Perhaps it isn't true! If so our pet spark of hope goes a glimmering. But our occasional ventures behind the scenes have disclosed that the usual radio personnel is made up of young men. Generalizing from the few studios we have visited, we guess that the same conditions obtain at the rest of the stations. Nor is it surprising that radio should be manned principally by youths. The business "broke" all of a sudden. In its humble beginnings there was no hint of the prosperity it was to achieve. To enter the "radio game" was an out and out gamble; and a gamble is not entered into too recklessly by a middle aged, or past middle age, man. Moreover, on the technical side, there were a hundred boys interested in the mechanics of the new invention to the one adult that was similarly engaged in experiment. The consequence was that back in the early twenties, opportunity-seeking young business men and just-out-of-college boys made a rush to enter the broadcasting profession, and succeeded pretty well in filling up all available seats. And now the older man, the conservative who hesitated to jump at such a long chance, must stick to his banking business or the Governorship, for there's no room for him. Possibly you have yourself at some time become interested in the resonant, deep and mature voice of some favored announcer. You have pictured him as a kindly, grayed old man with dignified side whiskers. Chance, let us say, brings you to his radio studio. Curiously you ask to have him pointed out. Lo and behold! you are shown a sleek haired youth in twenty-six inch trou'. Or mayhap you have read in the public prints the comments of Manager Bloopus of whew on current radio events and marveled at the paternal sageness of his pronunciamentos; only to have some disillusioning friend point him out in an ice cream parlor perched boyishly on a high stool guzzling a double choc'lit sundae with nuts. Yes, radio as we find it at present is in the hands of the youth of the country: it is a boy's profession. We state this in no spirit of derision but as, we believe, a fact. Far be it from us to hold against the purveyors of radio entertainment their youth. Perhaps we are in a glass house! On the contrary, we think that this factor was in a measure responsible for the wim and wigor of radio's get-away. And supposing radio were operated by a bunch of gray beards; would we be any better off? The answer is no. For they wouldn't be any better equipped to manage a radio station for having spent forty years in the dry goods business or operating a newspaper. At the time radio came into being no one was any better fitted by previous experience to enter its ranks than anyone else. For radio was, and is, different than any previously AIDAN REDMOND, OF WBZ A new addition to the announcing staff of the Springfield station. Mr. Redmond officiates usually from the Hotel Brunswick studio of station wbz, in Boston. Before he came to radio, Mr. Redmond was on the concert stage. He is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts existing sort of "art" or industry. By way of exception, people in the theatrical business had some sort of qualification for the new trade, but not much. Also, the impressarios of the musical world were specially fitted, but unfortunately for us listeners, but few of them abandoned their concert halls and Iyceums for the radio studios. And now to sound the cheerful note which we promised in the opening paragraph of this dissertation. When things look blackest we are consoled by this reassuring thought: what of ten, twenty years from now? Ah, there you have it — the secret of our ineradicable smile! We, the listeners, will be being served by a flock of veterans. The present staff of each and every radio station, barring assassinations, and acts of God, will still be in existence, in toto. We cannot help but believe that this accumulation of experience will mean much. An analogous condition exists in the automobile business to-day. It is the boast of several large concerns that they have almost the identical organization with which they started twenty-odd years ago. Such an organization necessarily becomes closely knit and highly efficient. Ten or twenty years diligently devoted to an endeavor to discover "what the public wants" should certainly result in some light being cast upon that elusive riddle. The making up of the programs and the doling out of them should by that time be reduced to a formula. The demands of the public will doubtless vary slightly from time to time, but once having determined the general trend of its likings it will be easy to introduce these gradual variations. Take, for instance, the announcer. Ten or twenty years of announcing (if any of them stick it out that long) should completely exhaust the jests of any announcer and make him a mechanical "announcing machine" — which is just what we would have him. In the course of that time he should have experienced almost every conceivable situation, from conniption fits on the part of the tenor soloist to an explosion in the studio. (And the announcer, lest we fail to give him credit, has plenty of exacting situations to handle.) So in 1936 we may expect him to smooth over any mishap gracefully, and to deliver himself of his routine labors in a very minimum of words. Of course there is the danger of an inbred organization going stale. But there will inevitably be some changes, some new blood entering the broadcasting profession. And all the while there