A SERIAL IS A SERIAL IS A SERIAL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 344, 25 January 1946, Page 24

A SERIAL IS A SERIAL IS A SERIAL

| But What Does It Have That Keeps It Going? | Baca Miss Gertrude Stein, it goes on and on and on. And from "~ time to time there arise, like the cyclic climaxes in the serial itself, brief but bitter controversies about its cultural value or its social effects. We have had one recently.in our own corfespondence columns, so we decided to make a few enquiries. What we discovered appears below.

extracts from recent readers’ letters which indicate the prevailing attitudes, for and ie we begin with, here are some against: Briet: How much longer must we suffer the radio serial . . .? Satisfied Blind Listener: I want to say that I and a party of friends listen to the feature . . . every week day, and I wish to say that we look forward to it daily, as I know a lot of hospital patients do also. We hope it will continue for many months yet... Interested: I do not know why some people have to keep picking at radio serials . . . I have listened to serials for a long time and there are some good and some just a little trying at times, but I have always been able to shift the dial to something more in my line... Polly: I fully endorse the remarks of Briar. From remarks I hear everywhere, everyone is heartily tired of it... * % a E found, by asking questions of the commercial division of the NBS (responsible for the output of serials), that whether they please the majority of listeners or whether they do not, they are certainly listened to. One, for instance, has been on the air since December, 1942, having worked its way through all the ZB stations. Heard on five mornings a week, its story is built round one main character who, as all beautiful women should, got married. Fourteen-Thousand Sixpences In October of last year, when the radio banns were published and the church had given its blessing, the voice of a male announcer came into the programme, saying that the sponsors offered listeners a paper pattern of the heroine’s going-away frock. All listeners were asked to do was to send in stamps to the value of sixpence and name the 8%ize required. All the sixpences were handed to the National Patriotic Fund for sick and wounded welfare work. We do not know whether any female listeners wept into their cambric handkerchiefs during the radio wedding ceremony, but we are informed that to date the sponsors of the programme have received 14,000 requests for patterns. And that the majority came from mature women is shown by the sizes of patterns specified. A Survey in America Daytime serials became a focus of attention in America a year or so ago. As in any discussion, a good many things were said that contained constructive criticism, and a good many things were said that.had little relation to the facts.

So the Columbia Broadcasting System thought that the widespread interest in the topic called for a good measure of calm and impartial research. Acting on _its own responsibility to its listeners and customers alike, it undertook a survey of the whole subject. The purpose was to find out every thing that could be learned about daytime serial programmes and their audiences. Personal interviews were conducted with 6,000 adults. A thousand of them kept a full week’s listening diary

in which they set down the programmes they listened to between 8.0 a.m. and 11.0 p.m. It was found that of all women at home in the daytime 54 per cent listened to serial programmes; 46 per cent did not. The average serial programme was listened to 2.5 times a week. For 31 per cent of the time the women did nothing but listen; 69 per cent did something else as well. Music While You Wash — A young, recently-married woman said that when her husband went to work in the morning she went into the kitchen to do the dishes. She turned on the radio on the window sill to listen to the serial and, by the time it was finished, she had finished the dishes without knowing she had done them. The Australian Information Bureau was asked about the listening habits of women in Australia. One man said: "My wife has been listening to the same serial for the last seven years while she does the washing. She says it makes her forget that she is washigg." Critics, according to the CBS, are divided into two classes. There are those . who say: Of course I never listen to serials, and then follow up their statement with false charges and negative criticism. And there are those who de (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) not listen enough. A woman criticised the daytime serial for not giving support to the war effort. She admitted that | she listened to the serials for only one day. And that was like going into a bookshop, skimming the ‘pages of a dozen books and then evaluating the whole shop. A serial must be sampled more than once, By reading only one excerpt from Pickwick Papers it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that it was a book about a corrupt judicial system. Another excerpt would persuade the reader that it was a love story; another a ghost story. After about 20 excerpts one would get an idea of what Pickwick Papers was all about.

In the nation-wide study, the listener was asked: What is it about your favourite serial that you like? Fifty-five per cent said: It’s so interesting; its humorous, or it’s an exciting war story. The remainder said that they liked the stories because they liked the voices-or because the parts were well acted-or because the stories were instructive. When asked if they believed the serials to be true to life, the majority said Yes. In fact they recognised themselves either as they were or as they would like to be, We know that in New Zealand serials based on novels increase book sales considerably, And probably, as far as serial tastes in New Zealand are concerned, they do not differ greatly from American opinions, After all, as Gertrude Stein might say: People are people are people.