Radio revue (Dec 1929-Mar 1930)

JANUARY, 19 3 0 33 America's Radio Programs LACK Variety and Imagination By JULIUS MATTFELD EDITOR'S NOTE — Having seen the "back-stage" operations of the two large broadcasting systems, Julius Mattfeld is -well qualified to discuss his subject. He gave up his executive position with the NBC's music and book library to take charge of the CBS departments in the same field. His opinion is expressed here with his characteristic frankness. RADIO broadcasting, as we enjoy it today, is the result of about ten years of development and growth. In this comparatively short time, it has offered entertainment as well as education and edification along every conceivable line of human endeavor. It has given us operas, light and grand; concerts, both symphonic and popular; dramas and melodramas; oratorios and cantatas; dramatizations of novels, magazine stories and serials; accounts of baseball, football, prize-fighting, horse-racing and yachting events; it has revived interest in the old Negro minstrel shows; it has brought before the microphone speakers and orators of national and international eminence; it has helped to spread ideas of personal hygiene and better living conditions; it has transferred religious instruction from the church to the home — in short, it has been the world's greatest medium of direct intercourse among people since the invention of the printing press. It stands today before the world like the figure of the god Janus — one face turned toward the past, the other looking hopefully into the future. What will be its future? we may now ask. One cannot answer this question except by asking: has it accomplished all that it could have done in the ten years of its existence? The answer to this query is a categorical NO! The radio public today is complaining of the character of the programs "put on the air". Tune into whatsoever station it may, it finds a similarity of programs and a duplication of material offered all along the dial. j=F ?=S= 5=6 zzsz # ^ t ?, > 'Li I ' ' ^—jg==feS fcci e »/ The Herr Doktor Julius Mattfeld, hemmed in by Wagner, Strauss, music paper and musico-literary queries, every one of which he can answer without even looking at the book. America Lags in Programs Although America is far ahead of Europe in its radio developments, it is behind the older continent in programbuilding imagination. There is still a vast amount of literature and music which has not been even superficially touched by our American program builders. Too much stress is laid by them upon what they think the public wants; in their haste they forget — or, rather, overlook — the fact that the potential American radio public is infinitely smaller, despite the calculations of radio statisticians, than the population of the country; that many a radio is silent because the musical and artistic desires of its owner are unsatisfied. The libraries of the world are rich in materials which could be adapted to radio presentation. Several of the larger American radio organizations in the East, following the example of the British Broadcasting Company, are wisely developing libraries of their own. These, it is no breach of business ethics to say, already contain many things which have never come to the attention of the station's program builders — in fact, they contain many an item which would help to diversify the present programs. Some day, unless official politics conspire to prevent it, the library, instead of functioning, as it now does, merely as a supply agency for programs, will be the real, originating source of programs, and will include as its adjuncts both the program and the continuity departments, as well as the publicity department — all then, under the supervision of one master mind; a twentieth century librarian!