Radio Broadcast (May 1928-Apr 1929)

AS I HI RKOAIX AVIt-K SEETD RY CART BKEHEB Z Note on Programs IT DOES a man good to theorize, once in a while, on a subject about which he really knows little. It may not benefit anyone else, but every writer is entitled to such holidays. Writing with a considerable degree of knowledge and experience is deadening to the spirit. I, for example, am an engineer in the ways of broadcasting. I am not risking much when I recite Ohm's Law for the customers or tell them they should not use 378-W microphones for paperweights. That is not to say that I know all about such things, but I can't help knowing something, and the readers give me the benefit of whatever doubt there is, sometimes, even, with more confidence in the accuracy of my opinions than I have myself. But concerning broadcast programs I know nothing. I have never composed one; I have never even sat in the same office with any of the lyric poets who are entrusted with this duty. Usually I do not cogitate particularly about programs. I am satisfied if they leap from the antennas with reasonable fidelity and no interruptions. What got me to thinking about them was an evening (and morning) I happened to spend at a Russian cabaret on Lenox Avenue in New York. Not being a connoisseur of cabarets, 1 did not find the place for myself; some friends took me there. It was a small place in a very ordinary neighborhood, with tables ranged closely along the walls, a two-by-four dance floor, and grotesque frescoes of moujiks in blouses. The patrons were mostly Russians, with an admixture of Americans, including the handsome young cops on the near-by beats, who, in civies, appeared around 2 A. M. with their girls. At one end of the room a small platform held an upright piano, competently played by a faded lady in an evening gown. She accompanied, by turns, a violinist and a baritone. The violinist played numbers which, with some exceptions, I had heard often enough on the radio. The songs offered by the baritone, however, were novelties to me — native Russian melodies which were sweet in my jaded ears, calloused by thousands of repetitions of the "Song of the Volga Boatmen" — I wish to God they could be sunk five fathoms deep in their river if there is no other way of suppressing their chantey. Later an accordion player, who records for one of the phonograph companies, performed on his instrument with an astonishing virtuosity. Sitting at a table opposite a girl, this man could make violent love simply by looking at the object of his admiration and playing the accordion, sometimes with wistful softness, sometimes with violent crashes which, in the small room, sounded like the swells of Roxy's organ. The customers joined in the choruses, and I am bound to say that everybody seemed to be having a nicer time — and at less expense — than at any of the Broadway clubs where I have left two days' salary. It was interesting to see how naturally all these different people — the Russian emigres, the young Irish-American patrolmen, a few people from the phonograph companies, some normally hard-boiled business men, and a scattering of nondescripts, were able to have a good time together. And they were able to have it with much less drinking than in average night clubs. It was this apparent community of interest which made me thinkoi radio program technique. Here a lot of Russians, ordinary U. S. business men, the constables and their girls, were all having a good time in an exotic milieu as far removed from the usual scenes of radio as anything I could imagine. It made me wonder whether the program managers do not underestimate the flexibility of their audiences, whether their fear that any offering which is not the radio equivalent of the Saturday Evening Post must fail is altogether justified. Of course, I can see why the program concoctors feel they must play safe. Radio programs are essentially a means of cultivating public friendship, of acquiring the good will of a large number of people. The idea is to give the public what it wants and not to offend it. What the public wants is an indefinite quantity; the business of the show business is constantly to try out things and see whether the public likes them or not. You succeed and make money, or you fail and lose money. Nobody knew that the public, or a section of it, would want "What Price Glory" and pay $3.85 per individual to see it, but that turned out to be the case, luckily for Messrs. Stallings, Anderson, and Hopkins. But the break might just as easily have gone the other way. If, then, you can draw on a large body of material which is fairly certain to have general appeal and not to hurt anyone's feelings, you are doing the wise thing from the commercial standpoint. Such a body of material exists. It is based on the primal occupations of ordinary human beings. A girl with a charming voice singing "Thank God for a Garden" will offend no one but a few atheists, and it may afford a mild pleasure to a lot of listeners who like gardens, sweet voices, and tunes they have heard before. The "Four Indian Love Lyrics," the Barcarolle from the "Tales of Hoffman," "O, Promise Me" and a few thousand other things are in the same category. The broadcasters, with occasional exceptions, inevitably slide into that category. Why should they monkey with dangerous artistic creations which, while they are new, are likely to arouse passions and interfere, perhaps, with the sale of goods. Walter Damrosch told us over the radio the other night that when his father first conducted the "Ride of the Valkyrie" half the audience hooted and whistled and the piece had to be played over again. At the premiere of The Playboy of the Western World there was a FIG. I l6l riot. Walt Whitman lost his job because he wrote Leaves of Grass. So we stick to "My Blue Heaven" and "My Ohio Home." "Old Black Joe" is nice, too. But there is always the specter of boredom in the background. Nothing venture, nothing have. As a relative outsider, I am unable to say how much should be ventured. I would suggest, however, that both extremes are dangerous. Certainly I am far from arguing that radio broadcasting should become an experimental theater for any of the arts. There is not the slightest chance of such a move being made or of its succeeding if anyone has the temerity to make it.' But extreme conservatism is also dangerous, the more so because it presents a deceptive appearance of security. What does the broadcaster gain by providing a musical background for home conversation about the stock market, automobile accidents, and golf? An intermediate position would seem to be most rational for broadcasters who want to plan for the future rather than to let the future do what it likes with them. A lot of interesting novelties could be dug up by a broadcaster who wanted to scout around in places like the Russian cabaret I described. Properly staged, some of those gypsy songs might go over better than "Annie Laurie." I haven't the ideas myself; I am simply expressing the feeling that the material is there and is being neglected because the people doing the job are afraid to go off the beaten track. Or take a literary instance. Has anybody ever tried radiodramatizing Conrad's The Shadow Line? It contains in the story of an ill-starred sea voyage a matchless description of the bravery of a young sailor during the hours of danger, and his collapse when safety has been reached, because he has a weak heart and is afraid he will die — he who faced death intrepidly from the outside cannot face it from the inside. If part of that novel cannot be done successfully on the radio, plenty of others in its class can be done — but as things now stand such attempts are seldom even considered. The nearest approach to it I can think of is the Eveready portrayal of a somewhat inebriated young woman acting up in a night club. The world contains enough interesting situations, stories, and music to make radio programs more alive than most of them are, but we must get rid of a good deal of our caution, our fear for our incomes, and our Pecksniffian ideas before we can utilize them. That will not be, I suspect, until we have to utilize them, but that day may be nearer than some of the brethren realize. Design and Operation of Broadcast Stations 21. Water-Cooled Vacuum Tubes THE water-cooled vacuum tube falls into the class of energy converters in which each unit is required to handle so much power that its interna] losses endanger its further existence. Lost power, in general, must be dissipated as heat. Usually by making the machine large enough we can keep the temperature rise within safe limits, but it is often more convenient to make the dimensions relatively small and to