1938: Radio Broadcasting

If the year 1938 proved anything with regard to radio, it proved absolutely that this means of expression plays a very much greater part in the lives of Americans than even its most enthusiastic followers had suspected. For the first time in history it was possible to report the hour-by-hour developments of the world crisis which found at least a temporary resolution at Munich. The public interest in this is indicative of the high esteem in which all kinds of news and special events programs are currently held. For the first time it was discovered in America (although once before in England and once in Switzerland similar happenings had occurred) that the technique of news reporting applied to a dramatic program could terrify thousands of people into believing that some dreadful event was occurring.

The strong public interest in freedom of speech and expression has been exhibited in newspaper editorials and front-page stories regarding the broadcast last summer of Eugene O'Neill's 'Beyond the Horizon' with its alleged profanity, the refusal to allow General Hugh S. Johnson to speak on social diseases, and the controversy over Father Coughlin's radio addresses. A large part of America was thinking and feeling on these and kindred matters during 1938, and even a larger part was considering Charlie McCarthy as the fulfillment of their ideal in entertainment.

Charlie McCarthy ornaments the most popular radio program of 1938, a variety program. This pattern of show has remained a steady favorite with the American listening audience since its inception. It is built around a personality, a Rudy Vallee, a Kate Smith, a Bing Crosby, or an idea, such as the magic of radio, and it gives pleasure to the listener weekly by offering him the best to be found from the stage, motion pictures, vaudeville, and concert hall.

Another steady favorite is the program conducted by the skilled comedian, outstandingly Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Bob Hope. These patterns of program show no sign whatever of losing their grip upon the audience. Those who pay the bills of radio inevitably look for the formulae which have proved successful. They copy, if they can; and were there to be found a Jack Benny under another name or a Kate Smith with a different appearance, they would willingly pay a very high price and install them in programs that would flatter the originals by the slavish copying.

The audience participation programs vividly illustrate this tendency. The year 1938 saw on the air an unbelievable number of quiz programs, some carefully kept extremely simple so as to draw into the circle the greatest possible number of people, others maintaining a high level of intelligence, the crowning glory of all being, of course, Information Please. There is as yet little evidence to show that the public is in any way satiated with such programs. It seems, on the contrary, to be able to digest a limitless quantity of questions.

While there is a small stream of complaint regarding the five-times-a-week fifteen minute day-time dramatic programs, the best figures that can be assembled indicate that such programs, far from losing in popularity, are gaining. Where a Crosley rating of 3 was considered good not very long ago, many of such programs now rate from 6 to 9 and the great advance has taken place during 1938. The standard of writing seems to be slowly but surely rising, and although from the point of view of artistic and intellectual content such programs have a very long way to go, the fact that they are moving slowly but steadily upward is encouraging, particularly when the astonishing growth in the appreciation of music which has occurred in America since the advent of radio is borne in mind.

The year 1938 saw Maestro Toscanini complete his first season of broadcasting and the first half of his second season. It saw concerts of an increasing number of symphony orchestras presented by broadcasters, including, of course, the long-standing and beloved New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra concerts of the Columbia Broadcasting System every Sunday afternoon, as well as a wide variety of chamber music and vocal ensembles. The performances of the Metropolitan Opera Company were broadcast as usual, and, as usual, were received with great appreciation throughout the continent.

In the field of the serious drama, much was accomplished in 1938. Whereas the commercially sponsored dramatic program has to proceed cautiously so as to hold the wide audience it must command, in the sustaining field broadcasters experimented in many directions. The Columbia Experimental Workshop offered a number of most interesting plays carrying on the tradition established early in its career. The Columbia Broadcasting System also found an appreciative audience for Orson Welles' series of broadcasts which he conducted under the title of 'First Person Singular.' The National Broadcasting Company presented the greater number of plays which had won the Pulitzer Prize, including three by Eugene O'Neill, in specially prepared radio versions.

It also explored the possibilities of verse as applied to radio drama, continuing the work it had started with Maxwell Anderson's original play broadcast in the autumn of 1937. Two more plays by Anderson, partly in verse and partly in prose, were followed by the magnificent one-hour verse play by Alfred Kreymborg entitled The Planets which was so successfully received that it was repeated a few weeks later. A number of radio plays were submitted in the Maxwell Anderson-Stanford University prize contest, and of these two were broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company. In addition, a play by Kreymborg, Ballad of Youth, and the prize-winning play John Brown by Kirke Mechem, although not specifically written for radio, were acquired, and the former was broadcast last fall.

Verse plays offer remarkable opportunities, for they allow of the treatment of contemporary ideas in allegorical or semi-allegorical ways. They return to the basic elements of story-telling and delight the listener by intriguing him into discovering for himself what is the meaning behind symbols.

That there is an increasing public for plays dealing with ideas and the more basic human emotions is now amply clear. Radio is playing a great part in awakening America to the importance of ideas. Over fifty stations carry weekly the America's Town Meeting of the Air program broadcast by NBC as against about half that number which carried it in 1937. Programs for special occasions have to be better prepared and better written. Speakers have to learn the ways of the microphone, and forget the oratory of large halls, if they are to compete successfully for the attention of the listeners.

The techniques of today compared with those of a brief ten years ago are astonishingly adept. The clumsiness which accompanied earlier attempts at radio entertainment seem unbelievable when they are considered today.

Personalities still intrigue the American public, and 1938 saw very few names added to the roster of real favorites. That two of them belong to the so-called intellectual group, Orson Welles and Clifton Fadiman, is a most heartening indication. That one, Don Ameche, came purely from a radio background and was not imported from the stage or the screen, is another equally heartening sign.

If 1938 was a year which showed sustained interest in the familiar patterns of variety, simple drama, classical music, and dance bands, it had as its outstanding novelties the quiz programs and the wide experimentation in drama. It also saw the tremendous improvement in the standard of educational programs and a concentrated attempt to aim them very specifically at certain age and interest groups. The United States Office of Education in Washington and various other Federal bodies have cooperated most heartily with the broadcasters in the writing and producing of many really excellent series. The broadcasters themselves have taken pains to develop such outstanding radio successes as the Great Plays broadcast over the Blue Network and Shakespeare's England over the Red Network of the National Broadcasting Company, both of them heard on most Sundays during 1938. The wide interest in the dramatizations of Paul de Kruif's volumes, under the title of Men against Death, broadcast over the Columbia Broadcasting System, further proves what can be done in the way of intelligent educational programming.

If 1939 can show comparable advances, radio will indeed be broadcasting in the public interest.