Radio today (Sept 1935-Dec 1936)

THIS INTERLOCKING RADIO INDOSTRY * IF A FLY bites a horse in the neck, the horse is annoyed all over. You can't isolate the pain or the reaction. The horse isn't built that way. Similarly, you can't do anything in any part of an industry as intimate and complex as radio, without affecting every other part. Fifteen years of progress under the trial and error method in radio have shown that whatever development comes next, in research, broadcasting technique, retailing methods, or even just plain listening, will invariably affect everybody in the industry. From manufacturer to consumer — from Eddie Cantor to the service man around the corner — everybody in radio has a stake in whatever happens on its remotest fringe. Radio today is as full of startling events as a free-for-all in a Klondike dance hall. New tubes, new sets, new selling methods, new programs, pop up overnight and are accepted as commonplaces almost before they're out of short pants. Facsimile and television have long since passed out of the stage of visionary speculation. Both are settling down onto a solid basis of laboratory achievement. Radio is beginning to juggernaut toward greater things. So don't let any body tell you that radio is slowing up, that the industry's youth is behind it. After fifteen years of radio development since the beginning of broadcasting, radio hasn't hegun to get started yet! All in same boat Out of the smoke and fire of the past decade of prosperity and depression, one fact stands out — like a lighthouse in a fog: Common interests thoroughly interlock all of the factors in the radio industry. We've all got our dogs under the same table — we're all in the same boat — anyway you want to say it. New developments already announced, as well as those still in their formative stages, only serve to emphasize the close association between all the various elements in radio. Look at it this way. Without research in radio and electronics, we'd have nothing to sell. Without deal ers and jobbers, manufacturers would have no market. Without manufacturers, the dealers and jobbers would have no products to distribute. Without broadcasters, radio sets would become useless pieces of mechanism. And without the radio industry and trade, broadcasters would have no listening audience. When the manufacturer finds it unprofitable to produce, or the trade to distribute, then research has no practical use and drifts into the calm of an academic Sargasso. Interlocked? Interdependent? So much so that nothing in the future can dis-entangle the ties that bind the present factors in radio. Indeed, the future, with its new developments and services, merely presages stronger and more tightly cemented mutual interests between set makers, set sellers, set fixers, and program transmitters. Must know With interlocking interests and mutual problems so obvious, it is clear that every factor in radio must keep abreast of the developments in every other phase of the industry. Broadcasting, manufacturing, engineering, wholesaling and retailing are not now and probably never have been self-centered and independent functions. The need for frequent and authoritative interchange of news and information within the radio industry has never been more acute. The need will grow as new developments carry radio forward to public services and sales opportunities undreamed of a few years ago. Broadcasters, for example, must keep abreast of new developments in radio products. With more than 20,000,000 automobiles in use, a fast upward surge in auto-radio installations may increase the broadcasters' markets and offer new circulation figures for broadcast advertising salesmen. Facsimile broadcasting and television, sooner or later, must inevitably reshuffle the whole structure of policies and methods in the preparation of radio programs and the sale of time. The market for radio on non-electric farms is right now taking on a sudden expansion, offer ing broadcast advertisers a better opportunity to reach the farm market. In all of these developments, the broadcaster as well as the radio trade has a vital concern. And manufacturers must know what's going on, not only in manufacturing and merchandising, but in broadcasting and research. Manufacturers must know when new services such as facsimile and television will be ready for the market so that the trade and broadcasters may cooperate in the public interest for the inauguration of such services; they must know and assist in the solution of wholesale and retail problems, for without a prosperous distribution function, manufacturing can hardly hope for profits. Tell Mr. and Mrs. And the retail and wholesale trades themselves, besides being kingpins in merchandising, must be able to interpret developments in each of the other fields, not only from the standpoint of conducting their own businesses more intelligently and more profitably, but from the position of interpreting them to their customers. Rural dealers, for instance, must keep fully informed as to new products that may revolutionize farm selling; city dealers must be alive to sales opportunities offered by experiments which may have their inception in the metropolitan areas ; all dealers must keep in touch with new programs and the most popular programs to use as effective arguments in selling. Service men, too, must know how to install and service new sets, new circuits, new types of radio products as they appear on the market. These are just a few of the interlocking interests of everybody in radio, but they serve to indicate the importance of keeping informed on every phase of the radio business. Radio today is a fast-moving industry. The future offers tremendous possibilities. Some of these possibilities are already common knowledge, and are eagerly anticipated by the public. Others are still in the laboratory and no word of them has yet leaked out. But everybody in radio today is going to have to step lively from now on, to keep pace with these new forces. Look at the record. Yesterday it was crystal sets, ear-phones and acid batteries. Today it's auto radio, new tubes, and flossy cabinets. Tomorrow it will be television, facsimile — and God knows what! Yes, sir, this may be a cock-eyed business. But boy, it's going places ! 16 Radio Today