Radio — The Conquest of Our Time
Excerpt from Sergio, Lisa, Radio—The Conquest of Our Time (New York: The Town Hall, 1939)
I entered the field of radio, as a commentator, in the year 1933, entirely unaware of radio’s boundless scope, amazing possibilities, and tremendous power. The friendship with which the inventor of radio, Guglielmo Marconi, had honoured me for several years before that, had opened my eyes to the infinite romance and to the stirring miracle behind the medium in which I began to work. Gradually, radio ceased to be merely my job, or my career, to become an adventurous journey into the uncharted world that the genius of this great man of all times had opened to mankind.
Radio is the conquest of our time and age. It has created a link between all people on the globe; it has annihilated space and abolished time. But it is painful to find that the past few years, which mark the period of radio’s fullest technical development, coincide with a phase of history in which instincts of man seem to have escaped the boundaries of reason. Alas, this miraculous vehicle of universal understanding, this force channeled by science for the salvation and protection of human life, is used, in some quarters, into a weapon that would destroy civilization. Spiritually, radio can be the most destructive and the most constructive force ever placed within the reach of man, and man can choose the good or evil he will do.
The history of wireless and radio, counted in years, is as short as the story of its technical development is intricate. If it could be said of Marconi that he was a citizen of the world, it can be said of his invention that it was a child of the world, with international relatives. Scientists of at least six countries contributed, in greater and lesser degree, to the discovery for which ultimate and major honours go, as they must, to Guglielmo Marconi. Several physicists before him, groping in the dark, had encountered the force that is the life of radio-the ether waves. One man foresaw it, another located it, another created instruments with which to experiment with it; but to Marconi, a youth of twenty-one, destiny reserved the glory of harnessing force into invisible traces spanning two thousand miles of ocean.
In 1867, thirty years before Marconi’s first transatlantic signal, James Clark Maxwell of the University of Edinburgh theoretically foresaw the existence of electro-magnetic waves in the air. Thomas Edison, in 1875, on his way to inventing the electric bulb, noticed a phenomenon due to these waves and called it “etheric force.” But neither he nor Maxwell did anything further about the ether waves. In 1887 the German physicist, Heinrich Hertz, gave shape to Maxwell’s theory, devising electric instruments with which he defined the travelling speed and the power of the waves, and the rules to which nature had confined their action. Augusto Righi, an Italian working at Bologna, Marconi’s birthplace, improved on Hertz’s experiments; and another Italian, Calzecchi-Onesti, having discovered the effect of these waves on certain metals, made the tube, which as you know is the backbone of radio sets. His primitive device was developed by Sir Oliver Lodge who gave it the name of “coherer.” A Frenchman, Branly, further perfected the coherer, Lodge himself using it to test the transmitting power of the waves. In Germany a Russian, Popoff, who was working on Franklin’s lighting rod, used the coherer with the improvement of an antenna, or aerial. These were steps in the right direction, but none of them began to approach the goal that a boy in his teens, working silently and stubbornly in an Italian villa, was about to attain!
The young man, Guglielmo Marconi, was the second son of an Italian business man of comfortable means. His mother was Irish. She married Marconi the elder at Bologna, where she had gone to study music, and where the genius-to-be was born in the year 1874. From boyhood, Guglielmo was scientifically inclined. He studied with Righi and Rosa, two outstanding physicists of their day, but never attended public school, high school, or a university. Electricity fascinated him. In his ‘teens, he read about the death of Hertz and of his discovery of the electro-magnetic waves in the ether. His active mind forever in motion, he too experimented on the transmission of sound over the Hertzian waves, in the laboratory he had set up on his father’s country estate. His work began with a failure, but, comforted by his own faith in his end and his mother’s belief in him, he tried again and again until, to the family’s amazement, he succeeded in ringing a bell on the ground floor of the house, by pressing a lever in his third floor room, without the aid of connecting wires. That was in the year 1894.
Next, he transmitted signals from the house to the garden; and finally, having overcome his father’s skepticism, he was given some money with which to build better equipment, and set up the elevated aerial or antenna. Marconi also constructed a receiver that repeated the signal transmitted over the air. In 1895 he took out his first patent and offered it to the Italian government, which refused it as something “not serious enough to deserve official consideration.”
One year later, Marconi set out for England, hoping to convince English engineers that messages could be sent without wires. He had connections in London through his mother’s family. The first London test was the transmission of a message in Morse code from a terrace on the Houses of Parliament to a point in the building of St. Thomas’ hospital across the Thames. Engineers and men from Fleet Street stood by, skeptical and amused. But the genius scored a victory, and a few months later Marconi’s wireless was being used in England to report the international regattas for the America’s Cup. Later, wireless was in service for the royal regatta at Kingstown. The transmitter was on the yacht of the Prince of Wales, the receiving station at Osborne House. Through this medium, Queen Victoria was kept informed, almost hour by hour, of the condition of her son’s knee, injured in a fall.
Then, on the twelfth of December, 1901, came the famous transatlantic signal across the ocean, from Poldhu, in Cornwall, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, over a distance of 2000 miles. Genius, once more, had a date with victory. In 1902 other experiments were carried out by Marconi on board the Italian ship Carlo Alberto, placed at the inventor’s disposal by the present King of Italy. On that occasion, Marconi set out to prove that the curvature of the earth, mountains, islands, and other obstacles could not interfere with the journey of sound over the waves. One idea was forever Marconi’s obsession: bring the world together through this rapid means of communication. The first regular and official message to travel from America to Europe came from President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII of England in January, 1903. Wireless soon became the official means of communication for governments, for navies, for individuals from one corner of the earth to the other. The pale blue sparks began early to save lives at sea. The Good Sands Lightship rammed by the steamboat Matthews summoned help from shore and the passengers and crew were saved. This was in 1909. In 1910 the British boat Republic collided with the Italian boat Florida, and rescue came thanks to CQD calls sent over the air. This signal of distress was later changed to SOS because these Morse letters could be transmitted with a saving of several seconds over the previous ones. In April, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg. Thanks to the Marconi signal, the Carpathia steamed through the fog to take abroad seven hundred persons salvaged. A young wireless operator, at his key in New York for forty-eight hours without a break, maintained the only contact between the city and the rescue boats. His name was David Sarnoff. Then came the Great War, when armies and navies helped the development and expansion of wireless through their own use of it. Radios told an anxious world in November, 1918, that the enemies had signed a truce, that the firing and the killing were at an end. Through the rushing years, men in all lands worked to perfect the system, to improve the instruments, to make the ether ever more pliable to their needs. Marconi, on his floating laboratory, the Electra, delved into the world of short- and micro-waves, and studied television.
So far radio, or “the wireless,” as it was known, had been a means of communication, and such it always remained in the eyes of Marconi. A few years ago Mr. Sarnoff was a guest of the inventor aboard the Electra. Their wives were with them, and as the evening drew on Mr. Sarnoff suggested dancing to the strains of an orchestra picked up perhaps from Monte Carlo or Nice. “Let’s tune in the radio,” he said, to which Marconi timidly replied that he did not own a radio set on board. Urged by the ladies, the two men disappeared into the laboratory cabin and after some time emerged with what Mr. Sarnoff called “a curious-looking but quite commendable radio set.” And then they danced.
America took the lead in broadcasting as we think of it today. With radio as a source of entertainment, information and enlightenment, once more the nation made headway along the track laid out by the Declaration of Independence--pursuit of happiness, inalienable right of man.
America’s technical contribution to radio began to take shape in 1908, when Dr. Lee de Forrest patented his “audion,” a vacuum tube, with which he has privately experimented in the transmission of voice and music. This was a milestone in the history of broadcasting for entertainment. A device to produce continuous waves which made world-wide wireless possible, was the work of Dr. Alexanderson in 1917. The first musician program to go on the air dates back to 1909 when, from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, gramophone records were heard by stations listening in other parts of France. Nothing more happened until 1919, when amateurs in America began to catch music in the air. It came from the experimental amateur station of the Westinghouse Company of East Pittsburgh. The engineer, Mr. Conrad, was sending out recorded music for his own tests, when letters reached him, in increasing numbers from amateurs who had picked up the tunes. Presently a store in town sold licensed radio receiving sets, for listening to his concerts. The Vice President of the company, Mr. H.P. Davis, saw the possibilities opened by this successful experiment; and when the Cox-Harding campaign came close on election day, November 2, 1920, the Pittsburgh station licensed as KDKA radiated the returns to the countryside. Broadcasting as an informative service was thus established, with America in the lead.
Early in the history of broadcasting, political men understood the potency of this medium. The first ruler to address his people over the radio was King George V of England, followed shortly by Lord Asquith, first among British political leaders to use a microphone. Swiftly, others took the cue-in England, on the Continent, in this country. Now radio is an invaluable card in the political game. The technique, or if your prefer the showmanship, adopted by the political men varies according to the country and the system of government. For instance, if you hear Mussolini addressing a mass of 150,000 Romans thronged beneath his balcony in the Italian capital, and then listen to Mr. Roosevelt addressing at least ninety million Americans in their own homes, of an evening, the contrast between the technique of dictatorship and democracy is as marked as the contrast between the tone and substance of the speeches. The clamor of the cheering and shouting crowd is a powerful element for the dictator to bank on; and the volley of applause underlining each imperative sentence thrills and confuses the mind of the listener in his home. The “Fireside Chat” technique is based on the opposite effect: a background of complete silence merging with the silence in the listener’s room. This silence is conducive to reflection and thought.
Radio has created for us the romance and poetry of space. It has raised sound to the highest level of importance. Somebody once called radio a “blind art.” Art, yes; blind, no. Sound radio has the power to create auditive vision for the listener. Sound-expressed in words, music, or just noises, of all of which we are growing more and more conscious through the use of radio-- stimulates the imagination and develops the pictorial side of the mind. As an art, which it is, radio belongs to the category of the technical arts, along with the motion pictures and gramophone recordings. Unlike the plastic arts, for instance, in which the artist himself must find a technique for his tools, or the musical arts in which the musician draws melodies from an instrument which is dead unless he brings it to life, the technical arts call for mechanical equipment without which the artist can do no creative work. To put it more simply, the technical arts call for cooperation between the artist or creator and the technical expert. The presentation of a radio program is an artistic achievement; the recording of music, song, or speech for the gramophone is an artistic achievement; a film is an artistic achievement. These three forms of technical or mechanical art are the contribution of our age to the arts of all times. I hardly expect this theory to gain prompt support from radio listeners and even radio fans or technicians. Radio has worked its way so swiftly into our lives, that we began to consider it as a household furnishing, like the telephone, before we had had time to appreciate its high artistic merits. The listening world, regardless of nationalities, systems, and politics, is not sufficiently appreciative of radio; and the broadcasting world is not sufficiently aware, as yet, of the standard that radio can, and should achieve. With regard to the audience, it is my conviction that seventy per cent do not know what listening really means. There is a marked difference between hearing and listening. Whoever, is not deaf can hear. But he who listens places on record in his mind what he has heard. This is a constructive and intelligent act. Hearing is a casual thing that does not entail understanding. Mark Twain thought so. He was shocked by the casual way in which people listen when spoken to. One night, at a dinner party, the casualness of the lady on his right had irked him terribly and, at a given moment, when she turned to him with a smile to invite conversation, he said to her, in ominous tones: “I have just murdered my grandmother; what shall I do?” To which the lady casually replied: “Oh, really? How interesting!” and turned to smile and invite conversation from the man at her other elbow. The moral of this tale applies to a great many radio listeners and radio critics who claim that they would rather have entertainment at home, but that radio is never anywhere as good as the stage, the screen, or a concert. To these critics I would point out that they should learn to listen, instead of just hearing, and learn to be discriminating in their choice of programs. Of course if you idly turn the knobs of the set, it is a hit-and-miss, mostly miss, game that annoys the listener and discredits radio. You should scan the radio listings, and pick and choose what you will listen to. Listening with method is the road to a complete enjoyment of the new vast world that radio has disclosed to our hungry minds.
Radio is called upon to entertain people whose attention is mostly engaged otherwise. We go to the theater intending to get our money’s worth. We concentrate on what is before us. When we tune in to a program, discriminatingly or casually, our eyes will wander around the room, thereby weakening our receptivity; the telephone will ring; a friend will drop in for a chat; or we will suddenly remember and item in the paper which we failed to read carefully in the morning. And the radio is finally turned off, because it interferes. It is true that not everything that we get from our radio set is good; indeed a great deal of it is hardly a credit to the intelligence of the listener. But the listener too is partly to blame for radio’s shortcomings. Mr. David Sarnoff, President of RCA, feels (I quote his words) that “the twenty-seven million owners of receiving sets in America, by their control of the nation’s radio dials, give their approval and disapproval to radio programs, and decide the ultimate fate of broadcasts.”
How many of you on some occasion tuned in, in quest of entertainment, and found all around the dial only cheap stuff, took the trouble to write an intelligent, constructively critical letter to all the offering stations? Yet the direct criticism of the audience is the only way for radio to gauge the taste of the audience and the popularity of its offering. The theater has the box office, and the press has circulation figures which show if theater-goers like the show and readers, the contents of the columns. But radio gives and gives; and how great, in proportion, is the response? In proportion to the hours of broadcasting and to the audience of the United States which listens one billion hours per week, the response is pitifully meager. Commercial programs, in this country, are a measuring-rod for popularity, but not always for standards and quality. If the product they advertise shows a good increase in sales, the program they sponsor has an appreciative audience. But audiences are mixed and varied, and often don’t know any better than to like what they are given, although they would welcome a better offering. European audiences, which pay a yearly tax for the privilege of owning a radio set, clamour for what they want, write about what they do not like, and, in the long run, the general standard of programs is raised.
Nowhere, however, has radio found new talent and entirely new ideas to use on this new medium. Charlie McCarthy, “America’s Town Meeting of the Air,” and quiz programs are about the only typical radio creations, aside from which talent from stage and screen is used. For the first time, on New Year’s Day, this week, an innovation was made in presenting a radio play. Charles Lawton and his wife acted their parts on a Magic Key program with the ocean between them. He was in London, she in the New York studio. The effect was perfect. The experiment makes news, and opens up the possibility of bringing together in one the voice of the world’s great singers or actors, regardless of where their bodies may be.
In view of some of its spectacular performances, which prove what American radio can do, it should do better and aim higher all around. There is one station in New York where owner and manager have a high opinion of the American audience’s taste and desires. Mr. Hogan and Mr. Sanger of WQXR expressed the policy of their station as follows: “We assume the listener is an intelligent and cultured person.” The New Yorker called this the most astounding statement ever made by radio men!
The system of broadcasting in Europe differs greatly from the system we know in America. It differs in several ways; but, if I were to sum up a comparison between the two, I should say that Europe views radio primarily as a political instrument, whereas the United States, from the outset, realized its economic value and hailed it as a new commercial medium. Being primarily a political instrument, European broadcasting has been submitted to government control from the start. In certain countries, the control is totalitarian, like the form of government; in others, it is a form of government supervision supposedly as democratic as the supervision of the Federal Communications Commission here, but in reality, stricter than the American idea of freedom would stand for. There is a good reason to justify the principle, but not the present practice of government control in Europe. For a long time, the states of Europe have been political enemies; and they all have been active enemies in some phase of their history. Since radio ignores frontiers, it was in order to prevent unguarded statements sent over the air in one country from offending the government of another that government control and responsibility had to be enforced. The principle, as you see, was commendable. In spite of it, however, in the last four or five years Europe has been in the throes of what may be termed a “war on the air.” Political speeches, news reports, commentaries carry with them incredible exaggeration purporting to place the country in which they originate in a better light with foreign listeners; and often carry insults and venom. Since government supervision does exist and is apparent in the reaction to some particularly grave offense sent over the air, it seems logical to infer that most of the attacks are broadcast with the tacit, if not the explicit, consent of governments.
This is how the various countries operate their stations. In Germany and Russia, the broadcasting system is operated by the government entirely as a government department; in Italy the broadcasting company is privately owned and financed, with a few commercial spot announcements and a few sponsored programs. Everything that has to do with national and international politics is controlled and censored by a government department. In Denmark and Norway, the radio is a government concern; in Holland it is entirely private, but not commercial. France and Great Britain have compromised between the two systems. In England, the British Broadcasting Company is described as “a non-profit-making public body, chartered by the Crown and operated for public benefit.” Generally, in political matters, BBC programs reflect the views of the Government; but if and when the Opposition feel that their views have not been voiced sufficiently, a protest is generally heard in Parliament which is heeded by the BBC. On international affairs BBC news reports have been as fair as could be expected of any one party in a case. In view of this, however, it came as a shock that the inventor of radio, himself partly English, should have been refused permission to speak over BBC stations when the Ethiopian war was in progress. Marconi sympathized with Italy, and made no secret of it; and his own fairness justified everybody’s belief that, in speaking on the subject, he would take pains to ease the tension and smooth out the difficulties that were daily growing into a threat to the peace of Europe.
In France, the compromise between government and private ownership of stations has been achieved with the existence of both government and private stations.
A feature typical of European programs, which was only adopted by this country in the last two years over short-wave stations, is the broadcasting of programs, chiefly news and commentaries, in foreign languages. This medium devotes itself to propaganda of the strongest colour. It might have been effective if it had not been overdone on all sides. What Moscow says in English at eight p.m., Rome denies flatly without mincing its words, likewise in English, one hour later; what Berlin will announce in French at noon, Paris will contradict in German at one p.m., and so on throughout the entire broadcasting schedule. This foments ill feeling, creates more misunderstanding than there is already, entangles the already tangled affairs of the chancelleries, and lead listeners to the verge of lunacy.
Fortunately, poison and antidote travel together on the air lanes. The average radio set in use in Europe can dial all the leading stations, and therefore can command as many views of a case as there are stations. Certain countries had tried to prevent their nationals from listening to foreign broadcasts, for obvious reasons. Technically they have failed; and it is only the threat of a fine or of a jail sentence that will make the unduly curious listener refrain from dialing the forbidden numbers. In one country it seems that a single type of radio set will go on the market shortly which can only reach local stations: a drastic measure which prevents reception of so-called “intrusion of the other side.” There was a time in Europe when the air was also afflicted with the presence of unlicensed or clandestine stations, operated illegally on a wave-length already allocated, which sent out disturbing messages and signals, adding to the already riotous Tower of Babel. None of them have survived very long, however, because the ether is under close technical supervision everywhere; and the persons found operating unlicensed stations are arrested under the international broadcasting law. Sooner or later, all offenders are caught in the net of the police.
Intelligent listening from any point in Europe makes very real the kaleidoscope that is radio. The impact of science on the human mind because bewildering. Often, from Rome, I have turned in to London, Paris, Stuttgart, Moscow, Prague and other capitals, capturing news releases, national songs, classical music, thrilling dramas, all in a great whirl of languages, some of them unknown to me, but all, by their tones, evoking colourful images for my mind to see. I knew, too, that everywhere others, like myself, were turning the prodigious knobs, travelling through space, letting their minds stretch and grow to make place for the new treasures to be stored there: a romantic gypsy fiddle playing for me in Budapest, a witty sketch performed for me in Paris, a Mozart opera conducted for me in Salzburg, a chorus of Sicilians telling me about the grapes or the orange blossoms on their sun-bathed island!
On one occasion in Europe radio was charted to play more than the part of reporter, evoker of images, or vehicle of propaganda. It was chosen to give secret signals for the rebellion of the Nazis in Vienna, in July 1934-the upheaval in the course of which Chancellor Dollfuss, as you know, was assassinated in his office. The organized rebels, it seems, were to capture the radio station as their first move-radio stations being now the key to military and political situations as a fort on a hill was in medieval times. One man fought his way before a microphone, and announced that Dollfuss has resigned, and that Rintelen, siding with the rebels, had succeeded him. This was the first of several conventional broadcasts intended as a secret marching orders for the rebels. The intruder was ousted, however; the report was denied, and the subsequent conventional announcements having failed to go on the air, the movement was thrown out of gear. That day, Dollfuss was murdered, but the attack on the city’s strategical points was frustrated. Soon the government forces had the situation under control and the regular Vienna broadcasts were resumed to tell the world of the tragedy. That night every station in Europe carried its own version of the day’s events and every listener was bewildered and frightened.
I hardly dare to imagine what the European stations must have carried last September during the Czech crisis. Bias and propaganda, I assume. But the American radio proved its mettle, carrying out a service that was amazingly complete, continuous, unbiased and, while telling all the truth, fairly reassuring throughout the crisis. Everybody concerned put his shoulder to the wheel in an effort to serve. Sponsors of commercial programs voluntarily relinquished their time; news flashed through every program; schedules were constantly shifted, station personnel attuned itself to the diapason of the moment. A particularly good service was performed by the Columbia network, with H.V. Kaltenborn on the air eighty-four times in eighteen days, leading a team of reporters stationed here and in the key places of Europe. The calm incisive tones of his comments never gave away to alarming pitches, to the use of sensational phrases, to unfounded conclusions. He was reassuring and persuasive. Max Jordan of the NBC broadcast from Munich the terms of the pact forty minutes after it was signed, and long before Europe heard of it. If anyone, before the crisis, had doubted the rôle of radio in our life, his doubts must have been shattered during those eighteen days. Hour by hour short waves carried us to Munich, Paris, London, Prague, Berlin. With our own eyes, as it were, we saw history unfold, we saw Europe slide to the brink of war and saw her dragged back to safety, while we gasped.
The unifying influence of radio is another of its merits. In times of distress, of need and sorrow, this influence is overwhelmingly evident. In Europe, international and national differences are temporarily forgotten, to let the common denominators of pity and human kindness rise to the surface. For one brief moment mankind unites through radio, in a spirit of understanding. So it was when King George V of England lay at death’s door; so it is when an earthquake or a big fire carries suffering and misery to some place on the earth. Do you remember, in this country, some of the dramatic messages that flew through the air, when floods swept down the Ohio valley, two years ago? And the same thing happened when the hurricane struck New England; when a Michigan village was isolated by fire; and always it happens when the police are in search of missing people. I do not know of anything more stirring than a sudden call breaking into the midst of a dance tune, to summon a man to the bedside of his young wife, injured in an accident, or more impressive than a flash by which a doctor in a small town asks colleagues all over the country for a precious serum of which he is in need. This is science going to the aid of science: radio to the aid of medicine, and both racing to save human life.
Once, and once only that I know of, radio provided the vehicle for a dramatic declaration of love. It is figured that about 500 million people listened to it. It was an epoch-making broadcast and an epoch-making love affair. Edward Windsor, alone before a microphone on his once glamorous desk at Fort Belvedere, took leave of his people and his crown. The woman without whom he could not face his heavy duties listened from her retreat in France, perhaps bewildered by the drama she had provoked.
Radio not only carries into our home people of world-wide fame, and facts of overwhelming importance, but also places us in direct touch with the working man, to whose constant and tireless efforts nations owe their greatness and prosperity. During Columbia’s series of Americans at Work, we have heard the views of the steel worker, of the miner, of the men digging a new subway in New York.
Radio takes us to the place where events are happening; or so we imagine when a running account reaches us through our loudspeaker. Running accounts are the very life of radio, and when television is full-fledged, these two services will merge to abolish all barriers of distance. The radio reporter’s task is a difficult one. His account must needs be extemporized and alive with human interest. It is not uncommon that the event is delayed or even fails to take place; and then the reporter must fill in his time endeavouring to make the audience forget the delay, or the absence of the feature. Gabriel Heatter, who covered the Hauptmann execution, had to fill in fifty ghastly minutes of such unexpected and tragic delay, before he could announce that the sentence had been executed. Even more appalling was what occurred to an engineer and to an announcer who were sent from a station in Chicago to take recording of the arrival at Lakehurst, New Jersey, of the airship Hindenburg. They set up their equipment and when the silver ship was sighted they spoke a few opening words, preparatory to possible interviews with the prominent passengers about to land. But what they recorded was one of the most horrible accidents in the history of flying. The explosions of the engines and the pitiful shrieks of the dying and the injured were interspersed with the gasps and incoherent words of the terrified announcer.
The radio press news service, the most thrilling perhaps of radio’s services, takes us back through the centuries to an age when the town crier was the only vehicle of information for the people. Here are we, 540 years after the invention of printing, and three centuries after the birth of the periodical press, resorting in a glorified form to the oldest known system of giving out the news. The town crier is with us again, in the person of the commentator or of the news announcer. At first, the press feared that radio-news would damage the newspaper business; but there is evidence in some quarters that, if anything, radio-news has increased interest in newspapers. A radio news-item is too brief to give the listener more than a mere impression of the fact. Consequently he becomes anxious to read the details as soon as possible. In America, especially, there is a feud between press and radio, due chiefly to the neck-to-neck race of these media for the advertiser’s money. The press seems loath to cede an inch of ground to the successful newcomer. Radio having come to stay, and being the great conquest of our time, deserves from the press more than it receives. Instead of mere listings, the programs should be received, as are the stage, the screen, the concerts.
Serious radio columns, pointing out the merits and demerits of programs, both sustaining and commercial, are becoming a necessity. Perhaps the press feels that criticism of a sponsored program would risk losing them the advertisement of the sponsor if he were their client; but it is unthinkable that the clients of radio, who were so alert in realizing the advertising value of the air, should be so narrow-minded as to resent fair criticism. As a matter of fact, criticism of a play often increases its popularity; and this might as well apply to a radio program! Sound reviews would contribute to the general improvement of programs, but they would require a very special kind of critic, of which the market seems to have no outstanding specimen. Such a critic should be equipped with artistic, technical, and general knowledge, with common sense, courage and good taste. He should know a great deal about music, drama, politics, education, the human mind, and radio technique. To be exact, what is really needed is a high-class radio magazine, with editorial comment viewing radio from every possible angle, with digest of talks, with suggestions, and with a broad outlook on what is being done in this field all over the world. So far the only high-class magazines concerned with radio are purely technical, or published by and for the amateurs. Whether we choose to describe radio as an art, a science, or an industry, it should have a publication such as this country offers for every art, science, service, and industry. Indeed, as an industry, radio ranks high. In 1937, 700 and more radio stations in the United States did a gross business of over 150 million dollars, employed permanently 20,000 men and women, and spent twenty-five million dollars (conservatively estimated) on talent.
Politics feeds radio in Europe; business feeds it here. Commercial or sponsored programs are the backbone of American radio. They are the revenue of an activity entailing enormous expenditure. Commercial programs are often the target of severe criticism. It is true that not all of them are good, and that some of them fall beneath the fair mark. But they are constructed primarily as a sales medium, and if a bad program has a buying audience the sponsor cannot be blamed for keeping it on the air. It is therefore the duty of the sustaining programs to raise radio’s standards to a high all-around level, and unfortunately not all the sustaining programs remain above the mark of ordinary adult intelligence.
Incidentally, I think that the term “sustaining” is misleading, and might effectively be changed to “presentation” when applying to programs obviously broadcast by the station for the enjoyment or information of the audience, without a view to selling them to a sponsor. “Sustaining” gives the impression of merely filling in time for sale. Surely the NBC Symphony, with and without Toscanini, the WABC broadcasts from Carnegie Hall, other symphony programs from American cities, “America’s Town Meeting of the Air,” WOR’s Sinfonietta with Alfred Wallenstein, WQXR’s recorded classics, are not merely spare-time fillers! They are presentations, or gifts of the best quality, to ninety-five million American listeners.
Some first-rate presentations, which the stations hesitate to broadcast for fear of going over the head of the audience, not only proved that the audience hold its head very high, but that they found eager sponsors in spite of their excellent quality. Outstanding examples of this are NBC’s “Information Please” and Columbia's “Mercury Theatre of the Air” launched as sustaining and quickly sold commercially. This latter program, incidentally, in one instance breath-taking proof of the persuasive power of radio, of its influence on the imagination, and of the painful results of unintelligent and careless listening.
Network broadcasting, a brilliant American solution of the problem presented by the country’s enormous area, facilitates the task of improving radio standards. Thanks to the networks, small or local stations are able to give to their communities the major programs from key stations, which could not be financed except through a network. Network broadcasting is democratic broadcasting. What goes to one should go to all.
Radio also enters the classroom, and is ready to become the teacher’s best assistant without, of course, aiming to replace them. Radio programs can supplement textbook theories with demonstrations of their significance in everyday life. Radio opens the mind of the pupil, taking him into the world through which he will make his way in later years. The “American School of the Air” is directed towards this end, and presents a special feature devised to illustrate to teachers the use of radio in the classroom. Educational features for children and adults are heard on all stations, covering all fields. Music in radio becomes a medium of education, and radio educates all people in the appreciation of music. Dr. Damrosch’s delightful musical appreciation program, intended for children and fascinating to grown-ups, proves my point. Radio gives us the essence of music and teaches us to abandon ourselves to its enchantment in the silence to our homes. Music and the ether waves are an ideal marriage, sealed in the harmony of infinite space.
Radio-art, political instrument, commercial medium, public service-is also a hobby, the most romantic of all hobbies, when it takes the name of amateur broadcasting. Sixty thousand individuals throughout the world call this hobby their own. The original Pittsburgh station, KDKA, of 1920 fame, was operated by amateurs for amateur audiences, and became the seed from which sprang the mighty tree of American broadcasting. The development of short-wave broadcasting goes to the credit of amateurs who developed this medium, their use of the ether having been confined to waves under 200 meters when regular stations were allocated the medium and longer frequencies. In the performance of public service amateurs have deserved and received universal conversation.
Radio has reserved the old saying: Mohammed goes to the mountain. It is now the mountain which goes to Mohammed. The entire world comes to us, leaping over seas and mountains, darting over continents, spanning the abyss of time, to unroll before us the miracles of the nature and science; to carry us forward, united, towards greater and better achievements. We stand on the threshold of a world vaster than our ancestors dreamed of, yet a world made smaller by the pathways in the ether shortening the distance between man and the infinite.