Radio Broadcast (Nov 1926-Apr 1927)

160 RADIO BROADCAST DECEMBER, 1926 some of you don't. Haw! Haw! Haw! But anyway for the next number the boys are going to play "Turkish Towel." Crimes like that are committed by almost all stations — even up to the mighty weaf. The reason is obvious: the announcer has been ushering in perhaps a couple thousand dance numbers during his past year on duty. It has become a gruesomely monotonous chore. He feels he must break the sameness somehow or go crazy. By some strange process of extension he comes to the conclusion that his listeners feel the same way about it. And this is where he exhibits the distortion of his vision. For, to the listeners, the formula type of introduction has not become overly monotonous since no one of them has consciously heard the several thousand dance numbers titled during the past year. The most of them don't pay much attention to the names of the pieces anyway. And this fact the fatuously facetious announcer might learn in the -course of a six month's vacation. Hence we advocate the half-year lay-off. The Requirements of a Football Announcer THE football season is with us again — or will be by the time this appears in print — and with it, the great annual boom in radio's stock. The great army of non-listeners, whose number is legion, perks up its ears and invites itself to some neighbor's house to listen to that much maligned contraption for which it protests utter disdain the other ten months of the year. Batteries are brought up to normal, antennas are shaken free of bird nests and branches, an extra dozen camp chairs is set up in the front parlor, and through the autumn afternoons an additional million or so listeners gathers to feast its ears on the one remnant civilization has left to us of the good old bloody jousts of Roman days. Football is easily the biggest event in the radio year. It is the great Revival Meeting. The Tabernacle is crowded to the doors with Lost Souls, errant males who own no receiving sets, who pay no tribute to the tube manufacturer, to the battery maker, or to the parts dispenser, Recalcitrant Outsiders who poke fun at the Great God Radio for the most part of the year. Now is the opportune moment for high-powered Evangelism, for the winning into the fold of these Scoffers. We do not think that it is without justice that football lays claim to being the best item of the whole year on radio's bill of fare. As we have before pointed out, music you can hear on a phonograph, speeches you can read in the newspapers, vaudeville you may find in the humorous magazines, but a football game permits of no such substitution. There is small thrill in reading the account of a football game the Sunday after. However you can't always get to a football game that is being played half way across the continent, nor can you for love or money get a ticket to a game if the last seat has been sold. But an ably reported football game is an awfully close second to the real thing. In fact, if you happen to be possessed of a potent, well exercised imagination, it may occasionally be even more vivid than the actual scene itself — and infinitely cheaper in this day of $40 seats. And so we trust that the 1926 season will be — is being — ably broadcast. It is radio's chance to make an impression on the thousands of new listeners. The better the impression the better for radio. The colleges can be relied upon to furnish some interesting games. The only ad ditional item necessary is for the broadcasters to furnish interesting announcers. Two or three individuals have already shown themselves capable in this role. Sad to relate, the dozen or so others have been thoroughly mediocre in past seasons. The ideal announcer of football games must be more than reporter, more than an orator, more than a comedian — he must be a football enthusiast. For if an individual listens to a football broadcast he, or she, is by that sign a football enthusiast (as who indeed is not from the wash lady to the button king?) And the dyed-in-the-wool fan can easily detect whether the announcer is really a "fan" himself or simply putting up a bluff. The great secret of the success of football broadcasts is that the listener does his share, cooperates, puts in real creative effort to make it a success. Your every-day listener seldom if ever goes half way; he really doesn't care much whether he listens-in or not. He demands to be shown. But the football fan listener goes more than half way. He is eager and voracious; he is what the artist on the boards refers to as a "responsive audience." As such he ought to stimulate the announcer to put forth his sincerest efforts, as in truth should the game itself, unless it be a hopelessly dull one. But if the announcer isn't genuinely an ardent lover of football he will inevitably fail at the simulation. Altogether the situation is a difficult one to fill. The requirements in brief are these; the football announcer must be first a football fan; secondly, intimately acquainted with the complex technique of the game; thirdly, a nimble-eyed reporter; fourthly, an experienced handler of the microphone, and finally, a craftsman of words — which means that he must be able to describe rather than recount. THE HOTEL BOSSERT ORCHESTRA Broadcast from that hotel in Brooklyn through weaf during the summer