"NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE EXCESS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 54, 5 July 1940, Page 14

"NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE EXCESS"

Radio Serials’ Perpetual Emotion

(By

KATHERINE

BEST

Although all the points raised in this article are based on U.S.A. listener observations, there are some local morals to be drawn. Katherine Best assembled the facts for the "Saturday Review of Literature" FEW months back; three delivery trucks drew up before the doors of the Columbia Broadcasting Building in New York. Inside the vans were packages of every size and shape from every corner of the United States. And inside the packages were items of every conceivable nature-ties, cuff ‘links, handkerchiefs, china, lingerie, an end table, house slippers, cigarette cases, floor lamps, a portable radio, and even three carving sets. All were addressed to Dr. John Wayne and Mrs. Wayne. There were no such persons as Dr. John Wayne and Mrs. Wayne. in the Columbia Broadcasting Building or, for that matter, anywhere. Actually, they exist only in thin air, for they are the principals of a radio serial called "Big Sister," in which the physician hero, named John Wayne, recently married the heroine, Ruth. The three truck-loads of packages consisted of wedding gifts sent by unknown admirers who evidently visualized the radio newly-weds as real persons.

When Tiny Tim Was Lost The Waynes are but two of 500 radio serial characters who experience this literal response to their fictional adventures every day. When Tiny Tim of the "Hilltop House" series became lost via a recent Thursday morning script, hundreds of letters were received by the broadcasting company, all giving minute clues to his whereabouts, one listener claiming to have seen him in the flesh on a certain wave-swept portion of Lake Michigan, bobbing about in a row-boat and in dire need of rescue. Hilltop House is the fictional name of a fictional refuge for fictional orphans, but to date there have been 40 requests from actual guardians of actual orphans for permission to place their charges within its kindly portals. When Ruth, heroine of "Just Plain Bill,’ prolonged her indecision between suitors David and Carey for an indefinite period, the suspense evidently became more than a middle-Western town could bear. The radio company received a petition, signed by every resident of the city, pleading with Ruth to choose David. " True-To-Life " Problems Eighty-one times a day, from 8.30 in the morning until 6 in the evening, lis-

tening America is bombarded with the quivering adventures of radio’s day-time heroes .and heroines. Eighty-four per cent. of all daylight time on the air is devoted to dramatisations of "true-to-life" problems. One big network carries 11 consecutive daytime serials, or two hours and 45 continuous minutes of "down-to-earth" drama every day of the week, Six times a day there are three serials running ‘simultaneously on the major networks; three times a day there are four running simultaneously. By six o'clock on Friday evening, America’s serial fans are supercharged with crises in sex, self-preservation, and family life. Women Are Most Loyal These 40,000,000 apparently insatiable listeners consist for the most part of women, and they constitute the most loyal audience in public entertainment to-day. They are, in short, the dollar sign of the air. For them, radio script writers, the most prolific of all serial writers, concoct daily dilemma-dramas which ease drudgery at the washboard and sell soap at the counter to the tune of a $7,500,000-a-year-business. These sagas of the saccharine, called "soap operas" in the trade, first saw the blight of day in Chicago 10 years ago,

sired by economy and damned by the newspaper serial and comic strip. These serialised "cheapies" were tried out almost simultaneously over local Chicago stations to ease the economic strain of morning musical shows. At best, they were considered fillers-in; at worst, experiments. Public response was instantaneous and terrific. Letters, telephone calls, gifts, poured into the local stations. Every former newspaperman who considered himself a decent candidate for writer’s cramp poured out reams of "little people" copy. Thus was born a new group of writers whose productiveness makes Dickens and Thackeray and Dumas look like producers of wordsissies. Thus was born, too, a serialised "art form" that is unique in the world to-day. "Soap Opera" Forty years ago there was the pennydreadful. Twenty years ago the to-be-continued-next-week movie thriller. Today there is soap opera, and where it will all lead nobody knows, for the soap opera’s claim to fame is its never-end-ing complications in the lives of charac ters just-like-the-folks-next-door. (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) The prolongation of a crisis is to some listeners the serial’s most irritating feature, to some its most ecstatic. The serial illness of a character always brings a flood of solicitous letters to the studio, sometimes even threatening ones, like this one to "Life Can Be Beautiful": "If you let Papa David die we will never buy another package of Ivory Flakes." And this: "For goodness sake, bring ‘Road of Life’ to a climax or you will have everyone hating Chipso!" And this one to "Our Gal Sunday": "Please don’t drag this susof Anne’s disappearance any more nights. My little girl is weak worrying about her." "I'm Not Listening " Returns on the "I’m Not Listening" survey, so earnestly conducted by America’s clubwomen (called the "WeGirls" by irked broadcasting executives), are not yet in. Unless they show some startling and illuminating facts concerning the "average" American housewife and her fictional tastes, radio will undoubtedly continue to gorge the airlanes with serials. From 8.30 in the morning until 6 o’clock in the evening, every day of the week from Monday to Friday. And why shouldn’t it? Nothing, evidently, succeeds like excess.