Radio showmanship (Sept 1940-May 1941)

Handle With Care! Venture. Columbia University's Research in Kid Reactions to Air Stories May Help You Choose Wisely, by IRENE GLENN writer has a virtuous and triumphant hero, most mothers feel such material is too exciting. It distorts life. It gives the child too great an interest in aggressiveness. Since children usually listen at the end of their day, mothers prefer relaxing entertainment. They want programs that will cultivate good ethics and social attitudes in their children. But children want thrills and novelty. And sponsors know these are the ways to attract attention to programs and commercials. The answer to the dilemma, "How to please mother, children and sell more products?" lies in the research of John J. D. Boer, Columbia University. De Boer studied the emotions of hundreds of elementary school children as they listened to a number of transcribed programs. Scientific apparatus recorded the thumping of hearts, the gasping of breath and the rising of blood pressure. The children "responded intensely," he said, to a great variety of situations. A lion, ready to spring, got a strong response. So did a grateful little boy telling his sister how much he thought of her. The crack of a baseball bat at a crucial moment in a ball game had a far greater effect than an eerie scream. In other words, De Boer found that the material of which mothers approve is as exciting as that they disapprove. But what a difference! A youngster may carry his excitement over the lion to bed and keep himself awake picturing the beast prowling in his room. On the other hand, the episode of the good little boy will more likely inspire child listeners to similar good conduct. Mr. De Boer's findings can be duplicated at home. A youngster we know listens — = without a flicker of an eyelash to gangster stories and cops and robber tales. But when Mr. Aldrich can't get Henry's pigeon off the roof, or Henry struggles through a blizzard with his bobsled, NOVEMBER, 1940 this ten-year-old hugs his knees to his chin and shrieks with excitement. A little girl giggles through a gruesome recitation of "the gobble-uns'll git you" and goes to sleep like a lamb, but when Pinocchio's naughtiness sends Gepetto through the snow in his shirt sleeves, she weeps till she can scarcely eat her supper. The underlying psychology is sound. It is the psychology of association and experience. Let lions roar, ghosts howl and guns blaze. The child's imagination is not developed enough to be impressed. But a tense moment in a baseball game or a bobsled in a blizzard— the feel of these is vivid from fingertip to toes. When a story deals with familiar things, the listener becomes a part of the story instead of apart from it. Novel and extreme effects have their place as attention-getters in advertising and showmanship, but to retain their hold they must be continually more novel and more extreme ; an almost impossible feat. It is the familiar which makes the strongest and most universal appeal. The little girl we mentioned had never seen a "gobble-un" but she loved her grandfather and the story of Pinocchio got right down inside her where feelings were tender. Despite the hurt, or perhaps because of it, she returned to it again and again. Those are two objectives of every advertiser — the strong emotional tie-up and the strong pull for the return of attention. So build your children's programs around the familiar experiences of childhood. Keep them straight forward and idealistic. Children's minds are receptive, quick to absorb and to imitate. Spon• soring a program for them "?> is a trust and a responsibil _^§= ity. But serve them well, and you will be more than repaid in dollars and cents, for an audience of children is the most loyal audience in the world. 93