Radio mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

THE CURIOUS CASE OF RADIO'S HIDDEN MURDER will out — and so will censorship. It took the romance between Mrs. Wallis Simpson and exKing Edward VIII to do it, but at last we've all been shown just how carefully the networks guard our ears from hearing anything the broadcasting officials don't think we ought to hear. Yes, there's censorship, though you and I aren't supposed to know it. The great broadcasting chains call it by the polite names of "continuity acceptance" and "continuity editing" — but it's censorship just the same. And in all the nutty world of broadcasting, there's nothing nuttier than that same censorship. It's involved, it's complicated, it's secret and it's awfully, awfully inconsistent. And I'm quite prepared to see the networks, when they've read this, rise up on their hind legs and yell, "No such thing! He's got us all wrong! We're Wide World just trying to be nice!" In which I'm very willing to agree. They are trying to be nice — but they're trying too darn hard. Anybody who listened to the way radio pounced upon the King Edward — Mrs. Simpson business, once it had been disclosed in the British newspapers, must have realized how closely bottled-up the commentators had been up to that time. Here was the greatest international human-interest story of the age, right under their noses, and they couldn't have their say about it. American newspapers were publishing every possible scrap of information concerning the "affair Simpson," conjecturing, commenting, editorializing, even wise-cracking — and American radio was leaning over backward in an attempt to keep its skirts clean of the whole business. It limited its notice of what was going on to a few bald facts, chiefly conveyed by Press-Radio News. As the Bobby on the beat outside Mrs. Simpson's own Cumberland Terrace house might have said, radio "wasn't having any." And it continued to be not having any until the English newspapers broke down and informed 43,000,000 people that there was a Mrs. Simpson. Then, and not until then, radio went to town — that is, it went to town as far as its news broadcasters and commentators were concerned. For its comedians, Mrs. Simpson was still nonexistent. The reason Mrs. Simpson is nonexistent to radio comedians is the same reason many more things are nonexistent to them. Radio will just not allow itself to hurt anyone's feelings. Radio's always afraid of hurting someone's feelings, and it is always busy warning its script writers and comedians to keep quiet on this subject or that. I say this even while I like radio. I want to see radio grow up. I hate to see it walking on tiptoe, even while I can see perfectly well why it does so and I can sympathize with it. Few people outside of the business know that both NBC and CBS maintain departments whose duty it is to read and approve all commercial scripts before they go on the air. NBC calls its department "Continuity Acceptance;" CBS calls it "Continuity Editing," but they amount to the same thing. Their purpose is, according to an NBC pamphlet I have on my desk, to see that programs live up to a standard of "quality, good taste and integrity." But in actual practic:, as I see it, what they do is (Continued on page74) Even Mrs. Simpsori, left, who has become the world's best known woman, still must not be mentioned by any comedian in radio. Right, these rules for several weeks barred mention of the ex-King's romance. Do you see anything in them concerning kings?