Radio Broadcast (May 1928-Apr 1929)

The Listener's Point of View Is the Highbrow Entitled to a Program of His Own! W' V W T *E ARE in receipt of several letters, as a result of our remarks in the May number, condemning us for an alleged desire to see radio go highbrow. We are reminded by the writers that " radio is for the butcher, the baker, and the candle stick maker." Further, they bring to our attention the highly original point that " Radio can't please everybody. The great mass of people can't be neglected. Would you deprive them of their entertainment . to please a dubious minority of highbrows?" All this because we had set forth an appeal that a little brains be applied to the devising of continuity programs so that they might cease being an insult to the intelligence. In reply to such unmeditated protests we wonder: if instead of an article on radio we had inscribed a lengthy plea that larger areas in Chicago be devoted to playgrounds, would not these same correspondents have written in protesting, " Would you have our great office buildings, hotels, and theaters leveled to the ground to provide space for a lot of silly pastures which probably wouldn't be used anyway?" The absurdity of such reasoning lies in its assumption that there isn't room for both. Because we, and others of the "highbrow" contingent, clamor in print, and otherwise, for more highbrow stuff, does not mean that we would have the air filled with it to the exclusion of all else. If we ask for a loaf, persistently and again, it is not because we expect even half a loaf, but because we hope thereby to gain a few crumbs of the general broadcast fare. There is not the slightest danger that the masses will ever be neglected by the radio entertainment purveyors. They present far too large a potential market for cleansing powders, tires, tooth paste, hair tonic, and linoleum for anything like that ever to happen. They will continue to get the popular stuff they want without lifting a finger. But if the high-schoolgraduated minority wants to keep some little attention directed toward itself it will have to continue to beg for it, to write to its congressman, and to stand on its head as means of ing notice. This is doubtless as it should be. Radio rights, belongs to the unlettered. They are entitled to make demands upon it. The lofty-domed minority can, with justice, do no more than make requests of it. The fairness of this arrangement should be evident in view of this fact: radio is the only agent of dissemination that has made its appearance since printing was introduced several centuries ago. Through all those centuries printing has been the rightful possession of the lettered. You may point to the vast stacks of popular periodicals that ornament the news stands as evidence to .the contrary, but that demon, Statistics, will show this to be but a drop in the bucket. If all the books and pamphlets and periodicals that have been printed since Mr. Gutenberg invented movable type back in 1456 were By John Wallace placed end to end they would stretch from New York to San Francisco and then some. And if they were placed in the order of their brow elevation, with Weird Stories and Liberty at the beginning of the stack and the Novum Organum or Mr. Einstein's book at the finish, it would be found that the lowbrow section would peter out somewhere around Elizabeth, N. J., while literature and scientific writings, philosophy, and other weighty tomes would stand in solid ranks for many thousands more of miles. In other words the printing press operators haven't really given much of a whoop for the masses over their 472 years of production. So if now this new contraption, radio, decides to put in its major effort in behalf of hoi polloi there can be no great cause for complaint. We trust we have by now made it quite clear that we have neither any desire to deprive the candle stick makers of their rightful enjoyment of any old kind of radio program piffle they may want, nor any slightest suspicion that any words of ours, or of any one else's, could succeed in having them deprived of it. But since the printing press operator not infrequently takes off his silk hat and his kid gloves and runs off an edition of the Police Gazette, it seems to us that it might be in some way contrived that the radio lords dish up a little program for the highbrows without, at the same time, keeping one eye on the lowbrow and both thumbs on his pulse. In short, we think it is high time that some one, somewhere, put on a program with a little touch of sophistication to it. Once before we published in this department a list of the findings we made by starting in at the top of the dial and recording everything that was available from the top to the bottom. We offered this list, a record of forty-one stations, as a cross section of what was on the air, and a HE SUPERVISES WBAL S ORCHESTRA Michael IVeiner brought a love for music when he immigrated to this country jrom Russia as a boy. Now he supervises the orchestral programs for which wbal is famous 223 rather lugubrious cross section it was. After its publication we received complaints to the effect that the general mediocrity of the listed turns was due to the fact that the listening was done in Chicago instead of New York. This objection is not valid, for of the seven or so first rate stations in New York, three are available in Chicago by chain. The three or four we might have missed couldn't have done much to boost the average of the forty-one stations examined. The following list, made from 8:30 to 9:30 of a summer's eve, is, on account of the late sunset, confined almost exclusively to Chicago stations. Its general tone would doubtless have been slightly elevated had such Eastern stations as wgy and wbal been available but, after all, we don't all live on the East Coast, so we herewith present our last night's list as a reasonably representative cross section of what's on the air: 1 . Dance orchestra 2. Hawaiian guitar 3. Dance orchestra 4. Soprano singing ballad 5. Hymns 6. Tenor solo, popular songs 7. Orchestra, popular 8. Mixed quartet, American Indian song cycle 9. Solo trombone 10. Piano and violin, popular music 1 1 . United Synagogue broadcast 12. Popular duet 13. Dance orchestra 14. Baritone solo, semi-classical 15. Dance orchestra 16. Dance orchestra 17. Male quartet 18. Orchestral program with continuity 19. Mixed chorus, light opera 20. Concert ensemble, popular music 21. Orchestral program with continuity 22. Popular singing 23. Banjo solo 24. Operatic selections We propose neither to praise or berate this Ve present it simply as a record of the it meets with your approval you can to be an endorsement of your opinion > well with radio. If it meets with your displeasure you can cite it as proving the contrary. However, we might be allowed to call attention to this: of the twenty-four programs encountered on the one hour trip across the dial, twentyone were popular in make-up. The only exceptions were numbers eight, nineteen, and twenty-four. Two of these were "light" and only one could by any stretch of the imagination be labeled highbrow. That, the last named, happened to be wjz's excellent organization, the Continentals. Thus it seems apparent that radio programs are directed, by an overwhelming majority, at the lowbrow. This does not mean that the highbrow may not also enjoy some of them, but it does mean, just exactly as it says, that precious few programs are leveled