Passive Listening

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 521, 17 June 1949, Page 11

Passive Listening

[N Arts Digest from 4YA, Mary "Martin gave food advice to audiences (concert and radio) in "The ‘Empty Bucket’ Audience Theory." Miss Martin, a shrewd, broadminded, and wellinformed critic, packed her talk with pointed obsetvations addressed to listeners rather than to performers, and especially to those of us who like to think that we listen with discrimination. I felt that what she had to say about the dangers of passive listening was even more applicable to the radio audience than to the concert-going public. In the concert hall it is to be presumed that most of the seats are occupied by those who have come with the idea of listening carefully and learning something; but the radio audience, more often than not, listens merely because the radio happens to be switched on, and listens, moreover, through a screen of counter-attractions such as _ reading, darning, or homework. Unfortunately, Miss Martin’s talk on the fine. art of selective listening, with her special plea for open-minded toleration and careful evaluation of new music, would in all probability reach only a small section of listeners, coming as it did in middle of the afternon. I feel that Arts

Digest is too good for this "tea-time" position in the programmes, and that it well might be lifted bodily out of its time-table and placed in a more advantageous position in the evening programmes.