Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

JULY, 1927 WHAT THE BRITISH LISTENER LIKES 161 from a train window. This is a strange confusion. You know you have actually begun to speak, but what exactly you are expressing, what the words are conveying, is not in your grasp. In the first moments you have more sensations than you can deal with. This plunge is headlong, dizzying, and obliterating. You have broken with the habit of a lifetime, have lost the earth. Whenever before you have spoken in public you have had your victims before you. They looked at you, you looked at them; they coughed if you bored them, and when they fell asleep you could enjoy their peaceful expression. "After the first five minutes, what you want to say really takes possession of your mind, and you definitely want to communicate to these invisible listeners exactly what you have felt. As this con- viction mounts, the act of speaking becomes more natural and more amusing. You are not courageous enough to look at the clock, which is glaring at you from the right, and you dare not glance away from the microphone lest it should turn its back on you. "Thedive is over;you are no longer gulping the water and gasping; you begin to time your strokes, to find a rhythm, to swim. And as you do this, the futility of your own ideas gradually be- comes less apparent; you actually convince your- self that what you are saying is not so idiotic. "Then the pleasure of speaking to invisible listeners begins to gain on you. Can they escape from you? You don't believe it. The disease which attacks all speakers seizes on you—verbal elephantiasis. Your words begin to swell. You feel you have a greal deal more to say, and you turn away so that the ugly, sour-faced clock can no longer see you. "Several athletic young men loom up at this point and make formidable gestures. You plead. They threaten. They drag you away." British Listeners Want Lighter Broadcast Fare THE business of operating a broadcasting monopoly, it would seem to us from our occasional reading of English periodicals, is no more of a sinecure than the operating of a competitive station in America. Complaints are continually visible in the British press concern- ing the manner in which the B. B. C. presents its orograms. Most of the complaints seem to be to the effect that the B.B.C. is too highbrow and 's taking advantage of its monopolistic position to "high hat" the common peepul. The London Daily Mail conducted a ballot of the preferences of the listening public and re- ceived the astonishing number of 1,285,083 re- plies. A vote of this size, it seems to us, can be taken as a very adequate expression of the gen- eral opinion in Great Britain, and this is how it resulted: SUBJECT VOTES CAST Variety and Concert Parties . . 238,489 Light Orchestral Music . . . 179,153 Military Bands 164,613 Dance Music 134,027 Talk: Topical, Sport, and News . 114.571 Symphony Concerts .... 78,781 Solos: Vocal and Instrumental . 72,658 Opera and Oratorio .... 60,983 Outside Broadcasts 51,755 Short Plays and Sketches . . . 49,857 Talk: Scientific and Informative . 30.919 Glees, Choruses, Sea Chanties . 30.445 Chamber Music 27,467 Revues 27,059 Long Plays 17,576 Readings and Recitations . . 2,717 Free votes not recorded . . . 4,013 1,285,083 The tenor of the vote was, as can be seen: (i.) A vote for more fun. (2.) A vote for fewer features which need sustained attention. The British con- clusions rather parallel those gained from the questionnaire run in thisdepartment. Our readers have an overwhelming preference for instru- mental music and a comparative indifference to plays, scientific talks, readings, and so forth. If a comparison to our questionnaire, which resulted in only one-hundredth as many replies, were fair, we might argue that the American public has a more sophisticated taste in music, since serious music, as of symphony .orchestras, topped the list in our readers' vote, but is relegated to sixth place in the British vote. THUMB T^AIL REVIEWS KYW and the blue network—The Philco Hour making its initial bow. We were playing bridge at the time and so couldn't give it very close at- tention, but we doubt if, conditions being other- wise, we would have. It struck us as an awful hodge podge of every sort and variety of enter- tainment that could be jammed into sixty minutes. WMAQ and the red network—Another new advertising hour, this time an orchestra spons- ored by the Cadillac-La Salle automobile manu- facturers. The orchestra was all right but oh the drivel that was plentifully interlarded! Long spiels such as "and now the beckoning roads and the sunny skies call us to the great outdoors and the next number will be in the spirit of the spring- time and of the motor car we are selling, the La Salle. Grieg's 'To Spring'." WEAF (and network)—We listened to an Eveready Hour devoted to "musical hits of pre- radio days," a program we had looked forward to with greedy anticipation. Sadly, though, but few of the tunes we heard were other than those one might listen toon any dinner music program, from any broadcasting station, on any night. However, a poor Eveready hour these days is sufficiently rare to merit notice. KDKA—"The Prisoner's Song"!!! WABC—We accidentally happened upon WABC a while ago just as "An Evening at Tony Pas- tor's" had begun to unroll itself. "Tony Pas- tor's," so we gathered from a rather brief announcement, was a one-time music hall on I4th Street, New York City, and the radio audience of WABC was asked to imagine itself seated before the stage of the Hall in the year 1895. So efficaci- ous were the efforts of those responsible for the staging of the program in the studio that we did THE WHITNEY TRIO A capable organization frequently heard through WMAQ, Chicago, of whose staff they are members. From left to right they are Noreen, Robert, and Grace Whitney, brother and sisters