Radio Broadcast (May 1927-Apr 1928)

220 RADIO BROADCAST JANUARY, 1928 THE HORRIBLE EVIDENCE DY WAY of confirming our suspicion that there isn't, we sat ourself down at our receiver the other night and proceeded systematically to get a cross section of what was on the air. At 8 : 1 5 p.m. (Central time) we started at the top of the dial and worked our way patiently to the bottom, recording everything that was going on within our receiver's range. The stations encountered extended from Colorado to Texas to New England. At 9:35 p. m. (Central time) the chore was concluded, and if you entertain any delusions that there are a lot of fine things on the air awaiting the turn of a dial, gaze at the cold and cruel statistics we found on our tablet: 1 Jazz Piano, playing "Ain't She Sweet." 2 Jazz Orchestra, dance music. 3 Couple at a Piano, wise cracks, request numbers, ballads. 4 Sentimental Songs, "Sweetheart of Sigma Chi," etc. 5 Soprano, singing the Brindisi from "Lucrezia Borgia." 6 Baritone, singing unidentifiable ballad. 7 Sermon, of the vocal-cord-splitting variety. 8 Tenor, popular ballad, "I'll Forget You." 9 Dance Orchestra, playing "Rio Rita." 10 Old Time Fiddling, with "swing your partners," etc., interpolations. 1 1 String Trio, playing semi-popular airs. 12 Choral Group, in the finale of a light opera. 13 Soprano, singing the Shadow Song from " Dinorah." 14 Soprano, singing "Just a Wearyin' for You." 15 Churchill Sisters, singing "Say Au Revoir but Not Good-bye." 16 Soprano, singing some light ditties in French. 17 Dramatization, of Rip Van Winkle. 18 Tenor, solo. 19 String Trio, playing Saint-Saens' "Swan." 20 Weather Report. 21 Dance Orchestra. 22 Novelty Song, with banjo. 23 Hawaiian Guitar and Mandolin, duet. 24 Travel, talk on Starved Rock, Illinois. 25 Female, reciting poetry. 26 Male Quartet, singing "Bye and Bye." 27 Prize Fight. 28 Brass Band, playing " Moonlight Wonderings." 29 Jazz Orceshtra. 30 Tenor, singing Welsh folk songs. 31 Tenor, singing popular ballad, "Lonesome." 32 Pianologue. 33 Tenor, singing sentimental ballad. 34 Violinist, playing Beethoven — Opus 12 Number 1. 35 Tenor. "A Robin Sings in the Apple Tree." 36 Trio, playing semi-classics. 37 Organ, "Pale Hands I Loved," etc. 38 Bass, soloist. 39 Dance orchestra, "On a Dew Dew Dewy Day." 40 Female duet, sloppy ballad. 41 Male Chorus, college songs. And there you are! Nowhere was the orchestral program we had set out in search of. Twenty of the forty-one programs were vocal, practically fifty per cent.! And this in spite of the fact that vocal transmission is one of the lesser effective things broadcasting is capable of. Only three of the programs encountered seemed to hold any promise of suiting our mood of the moment, numbers 5, 13, and 34. But a return to these dial positions found the stations already shifted to something trifling. But perhaps, we reflected magnanimously, we had picked out the wrong hour of the evening. So the following night we repeated the procedure, commencing at 7:15 p. m. Central time, and running through to 8:20. Behold our second log: 1 Soprano, singing Nevin's "Rosary." 2 Dance Orchestra, jazz. 3 Baritone, solo "Young Tom o'Devon." 4 Jazz Orchestra. 5 Dance Orchestra. 6 Dance Orchestra. 7 Dance Orchestra — (what, another!). 8 Organ, Mendelssohn's A Major Organ Sonata. 9 Male Quartet, " Back Home Again in Indiana." 10 Banjo, solo with piano accompaniment. 1 1 Talk, on something or other. 12 Piano, solo. 13 Negro Spiritual, "I Heard From Heaven To-day." 14 Play, Julius Caesar. 15 Small Orchestra, playing "Gypsy Sweetheart." 16 Band, playing march tune. 17 Violin, Schubert's "Ave Maria." 18 Vocal Duet, semi-popular songs. 19 Bible Readings. 20 Tenor, singing sloppy ballad. 21 Trio, playing light stand-bys. 22 Couple, singing novelty songs about sweet mammas. 23 Dance Orchestra. 24 Speech, by some labor leader. 25 String Quintet playing Handel's Water Music Suite — but, alas, even as we listened, this changed into a soprano solo! Such was our clinic — sixty-six cases examined over a period of two hours and twenty minutes of the most favorable broadcasting time of the evening. It may be objected that we didn't examine all the programs of all the stations during that time period, but we see no argument to show that the cross section we observed was other than representative. Representative, for the most part, of a lot of inanities that only the veriest imbecile, with the meagerest amusement resources conceivable, could dignify with the name of worthwhile entertainment. Of these sixty-six nrograms not a single one was orchestral. The tew trios we ran across were simply doing their five or ten minute/ turn on a well scrambled variety hour. we don't need so much variety TTHIS frantic search for variety is one of the *■ silliest things in the whole radio broadcasting business. Variety has been set up on a pedestal as the one goal to be achieved. The means used to secure it are devious and dull. Variety is necessary, of course, but there are other sorts of variety than that of the vaudeville show. Program directors do not realize that music, real music, contains within itself all the' variety that is necessary. If program arrangers only realized it, their job has already been done for them by the great composers. Practically every hour of program furnished by the broadcasters to-day is a variety program. And where every program is a variety program would it not be a variety to introduce a program that is not a variety program? We throw out the foregoing sound suggestion to whomsoever chooses to make use of it (fearing the while that no one will). To the rising tide of sponsored programs is due the blame for the overwhelming number of variety programs which is rapidly reducing radio to the level of a gigantic and worthless vaudeville show. In any schedule of entertainment it is the light frivolous item, introduced to break the monotony, that is the brightest thing on the program. This principle is borne in mind by the advertiser when he decides to produce a broadcast program of his own. He will make his program snappy and ever changing, he reasons, and thus make it stand out in high relief against all the others. Unfortunately every other advertiser goes through precisely the same sort of reasoning. The result is that sponsored programs are all as alike as peas in a pod, and no pea is any more novel or attention compelling than its neighbor on the left or on the right. All are dealing in olives and chilli sauce, nuts and caviar. None is willing to supply the meat of the repast. This meat must be orchestral music of solid musical worth. If broadcasting, considering it as a whole, were maintaining a proper balance in its offerings — a thing it must eventually do or go out of business— it would be possible to find good music, played by competent orchestras, at at least ten places on the dial at any hour of the evening. Its present condition, that of having no respectable music to offer, is certainly not a healthy one. Some stations used to maintain fair sized orchestras as a staff feature, but their number is rapidly diminishing — the very reverse of what should have happened. If radio had progressed in its proper channel we would now have some ten or twenty symphony orchestras throughout the country bearing as their titles the names of the stations which organized them, and being secondary in musical importance only to the old established symphonic societies. It is expensive, certainly, to maintain a large orchestra but when it comes to hiring dance bands or opera singers expense seems to be no important item to the broadcasting stations. If expense is not the drawback it must be that there is still a lingering fear that not enough people will listen to a highbrow orchestral broadcast to make it worth while. This fear, as we have already stated thirteen different ways, is ungrounded. The Damrosch programs (an exception we advance in further proof of our point) seem successful enough. And witness the way the populace is clamoring for more sophisticated orchestration of its dance music. They go wild over Paul Whiteman's rendition of "When Day is Done." If they like this why wouldn't they enjoy the compositions of Stravinsky and others of the modern school. Katscher's piece is simply a shoddy and ineffectual mimicking of the works of these composers. There are tunes in the Beethoven symphonies as simply melodious as anything Victor Herbert ever wrote. No one who likes jazz effects could fail to be pleased by Casella, for instance, or Sowerby. We defy anyone but the stupidest moron to listen to the first movement of the Cesar Franck symphony without craving to hear it repeated. Schelling's "Victory Ball" could sweep any Rotarian off his feet. The use of the human voice in Bloch's "Symphony Israel" is incomparable, but not incomprehensible. Ravel's "Waltz" makes those of the light operas tame indeed. Tschaikowsky's "Manfred" symphony, for those who would weep, is forty times more lugubrious than " Hearts and Flowers." The name of Bach could terrify no one who had heard Abert's arrangement of his Chorale and Fugue. Scriabin's Third Symphony is of such emotional ferocity that it could emotionally unstabilize a brass monkey. And as for soul satisfying harmony, better than any organ chords is the passacaglia that concludes Brahms' Fourth Symphony.