Chain & Flatiron

CANADA-BRITAIN

Canadians, disgusted with their radio programs which are similar to those in the U. S., took a first step last week toward following Mother Britain, famed for her able broadcasting.

On Parliament Hill in Ottawa, rich & pious Richard Bedford Bennett, Canadian Premier, put through the House of Commons in a single hour and without a single dissenting vote the unanimous report of nine Canadians appointed last February to survey Dominion radio. Briefly the House approved in principle:

1) Gradual emancipation of Canada from U. S. radio influence by the setting up of a coast-to-coast chain of powerful stations under Dominion ownership.

2) Reduction of the advertising content of Canadian broadcasts to not more than 5% of each program.

3) Supervision of Canadian broadcasts by a Dominion commission charged with improving the quality of programs.

4) Gradual buying out and regulation by the high-power chain of present small Canadian stations, many of them antiquated.

Brother-in-Law, To the House, Premier Bennett was able to announce some good work by his brother-in-law, Canadian Minister at Washington William Duncan Herridge. In the past few weeks Major Herridge has negotiated with the State Department an agreement opening several new radio channels to Canada. During the dickering Major Herridge waxed emphatic about Canada's radio rights based on area. Contrariwise, Acting Secretary of State William R. Castle pointed out that U. S. population is 13 times that of Canada, that after all it is people, not acres, that listen. Under the agreement amicably arrived at Canada will have, out of a total of 96 North American radio channels, six exclusively her own according to the U. S. State Department and eight shared with U. S. stations.

Goose-- Vexed in Manhattan by Ottawa's new radio plans, Spokesman Frank Mason of National Broadcasting Co. exclaimed, "They're killing the goose [radio advertising] that lays the golden egg!"

Over 15% of a normal "Amos 'n' Andy program is Pepsodent ballyhoo and to cut this down to 5% would clearly diminish, perhaps spoil, the sales value of the program.

Caution, Though Premier Bennett promised to draft a Broadcasting Bill and present it shortly to the House for action, many a Canadian editor urged caution. Admitting "the undoubted fact that . . . the quality of the entertainment is very often poor, and the overload of advertising little short of exasperating," Montreal's Daily Star remarked that "Radio is not a necessity of life," questioned whether Canada in the present depression can afford to build an estimated $5,000,000 chain of high-power stations and switch to broadcasting of a higher type.

Bluntly the Canadian trade monthly, The Commerce of the Nation, said: "It is argued that there will result a great enrichment of the cultural life of the community from the nationalization of radio. . . . Our own opinion is that at the present moment cultural enrichment borders upon an extravagance which is small solace for an empty belly. ... A state has absolutely no right to toy with the idea of radio nationalization . . . when men and women are going hungry."

B. B. C. In the British Isles it is not His Majesty's Government which broadcasts but a private monopoly licensed by Parliament, the B. B. C. or British Broadcasting Co. Ltd. Its motto: "Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation."*

Since last November the urbane B. B. C. has been moving piecemeal from quarters adjoining the famed Savoy Hotel on the River Thames back and up to its new Broadcasting House, an eight-story flatiron building between Regents Park and Oxford Circus. Termed by its Latin inscription a Templum Hoc Artium et Musarum, the big white flatiron is dedicated Deo Omnipotent, managed by lohanm Reith Equite (John Reith, Knight).

So averse is Sir John to publicity for himself or other B. B. C. folk that he vetoed a public opening of any sort, unbent on May 3 only to the extent of personally hoisting the B. B. C. flag: "A terrestrial globe on an azure field, representing the ether, with the seven remaining planets in the sky around it. Around the globe is a, golden ring representing broadcast transmissions through the ether encircling the earth."

Studios are located one above another in a noise-deadening brick tower which fills the centre of the flatiron. "Moisture given off by people in the tower," according to B. B. C., figures out at "one ton in a twelve-hour day."

British System. The U. S. has 609 radio stations, no license fee for receiving sets. Canada has 66 stations. It taxes receivers $2 per year, figures that there are some 100,000 "bootleg sets" in the Dominion. In the British Isles there are 22 stations, all directed from the B. B. C. flatiron. The license fee of ten shillings per set (about $1.80 at current exchange) supplies the chief revenue of the B. B. C. and most listeners feel they get their money's worth. From licenses B. B. C nets around $4,500,000 per year, nets another $600,000 from the sale of its publications Radio Times, World-Radio and The Listener. (Listeners who happen to miss an important lecture can read it verbatim in The Listener, on all British newsstands every Wednesday.)

The blind have their sets licensed free. Not only that, but charitable contributions sent to B. B. C. have bought and installed over 17,000 sets for Britain's blind.

Broadly speaking B. B. C.'s pay to entertainers is low, but by inflexible rule no one except members of the Royal Family may address a microphone in the British Isles without accepting some remuneration. Thus what B. B. C. thinks not worth paying for does not go on the air. Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald and similar personages are paid a nominal fee, said to be from two to five guineas.

British Programs, Statistically B. B. C. devotes 31% of its programs to "light" music, 20% to "serious" music, 14% 1 "variety" (songs & comedy), 10% to "dance bands," 8% to the children's hour, 7% to "serious" talks, 3% to drama, 1% to religious services, 1% to "gramophone records," the remaining 5% to "special transmission" such as charitable appeals of approved merit, police alarms, descriptions of missing persons.

Performers of world prominence who have broadcast for B. B. C. include Basso Chaliapin, Pianist Paderewski, Amos 'n' Andy (who proved unpopular), Paul Robeson (popular), G. B. Shaw and the late, great Danseuse Pavlova. (Today B. B. C. eschews and frowns upon such "stunts" as broadcasting Mme Pavlova's dancing footsteps, popular though they proved in 1924, 1925 and 1927, accompanied by ballet music.)

Regular classes, said to number 100,000 students, listen in British schools to B. B. C. courses so successful that school teachers have protested, fearing to lose their jobs.

B. B. C. is proudest of its "talks" (by everyone from George V to Pius XI) and especially of its National Lectures inaugurated three years ago by the late Poet Laureate Robert Bridges. Each National Lecturer is given a full hour in which to talk and if he talks only 45 or 50 minutes B. B. C. is not in the least perturbed, merely turns on what British listeners call "The Ghost in Galoshes." This is a clock which ticks seconds, known officially as "The Interval Signal." The box in which it nestles with a microphone is known unofficially as "Studio 10A."

B. B. C. officials firmly insist that a pause between all programs, with no sound except the muffled tread of the Ghost in Galoshes, rests the listener's ears and increases his enjoyment both of what he has heard and of what he is going to hear. Typical B. B. C. service:

P: During the General Strike of 1926 with Press, telegraphs and telephones silenced, B. B. C. broadcast not only news and Government announcements but railway timetables and essential facts of every sort.

P: Despite criticism B. B. C. has broadcast both sides of the Soviet and Indian questions, but St. Gandhi was not heard by British listeners though he broadcast from London to the U. S. and Canada.

P: Economist John Maynard Keynes broadcasting advice to spend rather than save cut the sale of National Saving Certificates in Great Britain from 250,000 per day to 157,000. In this emergency B. B. C. soon afterward put Sir Josiah Stamp on the air and his stirring appeal-- A Thousand Million Saving Certificates! --boosted sales so much that three days later 450,000 were sold and on the fourth day 500,000--a record.

P:B. B. C.'s "Radio Uncle" used to talk down to children, has been replaced by an Uncle graduated from Oxford who "talks to children as his equals."

P: Operas and plays (even Shakespeare's) are cut by B. B. C. as adroitly as possible to a length of 90 minutes, found by experiment to be the ideal maximum length for a broadcast to British listeners.

P: "Crushing refutation of assertions that British family life is disintegrating" has just been furnished to Sir William Henry Beveridge of the London School of Economics by anonymous answers received to his questionnaire about family life broadcast by B. B. C. last month.

"To my surprise," beamed Sir William, "the parents' choice appears to determine the sons' careers even more than the daughters'." Replies convinced him that British two-child families of today are happier than five-child Victorian families; that there is less intra-family snooping and gossiping and that, as an anonymous British oxyacetylene welder wrote: "No man, young or old, need hesitate at saying that a woman is his friend and pal."

*Cf. Samuel Morse's first message by telegraph: "Attention, the Universe, by kingdoms right wheel!" (see p. 9)

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