TALKING FOR THE BBC...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 888, 10 August 1956, Page 8

TALKING FOR THE BBC...

by

Desmond

Crowley

ONLY the best is good enough for the BBC, and no effort is spared to obtain it. So one soon discovers when commissioned to broadcast a talk for that renowned institution. Behind the deceptively natural voice that eventually converses so persuasively by British firesides lies a great deal of skill and application. And by no means all of this is contributed by the speaker: as it finally reaches the listener, the BBC talk is a product of team-work. From the very beginning, the whole project is handled much less informally, as I recollect my impressions and experience, than it is by the NZBS, which seven years ago, before I left New Zealand, seemed to me to be splendidly casual. Perhaps a new regime of sterner efficiency-not that one could possibly describe the BBC’s efficiency as "stern" -has been instituted since then. However, I find it hard to imagine the NZBS, with its 26 stations for two million people, matching the methods of the BBC, with its immense resources, operating seven programmes for fifty million. This is not to deny, of course, that NZBS speakers frequently reach the highest levels of BBC quality. But an exiled New Zealander cannot help being impressed by the very considerable pains always taken by the BBC to ensure’ that the inferior is never broadcast, and wondering if the NZBS is doing as much along similar lines as it could and should. Whenever I broadcast a talk in New Zealand, the procedure could hardly have been more simple. One submitted a talk to the Programme Organiser; one received it back, and was given a date and time. One arrived at the studio before the appointed hour. If one was new to the station, one read a trial page for the technician to check one’s volume. One waited-with some quickening of the heart-beats-while the second hand of the studio clock swept round remorselessly. The red light came on; one spoke. The result, one hoped, was not too bad. In Britain it is quite different. In the first place, one’s "talking" ability is not taken on trust: unless, presumably, .one is a celebrity, there must be an audition. Writing facility, one producer assured me, is no guarantee of ability to read a_ script acceptably--some writers can "talk," others cannot. Only that week he had been asked by his Regional office to make contact with a local writer and press her to be auditioned: the writer happened to be his wife, using a pen-name, He had been obliged to fail her utterly! Relations in the home, apparently, were not. then back to normal. ‘Though a writer may have the ability to "talk," a skilled producer can usually help him "talk" better. Ev BBC broadcast talk is "produced." First, the producer edits the script, perhaps reshaping a few paragraphs, sometimes re.writing a great deal of it. (One producer, amused at my concern over an alteration in an opening paragraph, told me he never troubled about the first few sentences: he was sure listeners were always too preoccupied with savune ps w voice to notice what one Ss $a) I’ve always tried to write © 2 sentences that would _Tivet. the attention of the most com‘pletely preoccupied listener-I imagine

the best technique would probably be to use a question of not more than six words! It’s a challenge to one’s ingenuity!) The author is, of course, asked for his approval of the alterations. As they usually express his thoughts better than he has been able to put them himself, though in his own sort of language-the whole process is very skilfully donehe normally grants it. The script being ready now for broadcasting, the date is fixed. As yet, however, the producer’s task has only begun. Before the talk may go on the air, it must be rehearsed. And the rehearsal, generally held an hour or so before the broadcast, is the producer’s main raison d’étre-the time when he really earns his salary. It is then the innocent speaker finds there is more to making a good broadcast than he had thought, It is done very pleasantly, however, as well as most skilfully, In fact, the producer’s function is to cajole the best he can from his performer, which includes putting him into a suitable state of mind. (The BBC have always paid great attention to creating the right atmosphere behind the microphone, though I was relieved to find that the evening dress that was compulsory in the early days of broadcasting — presumably to foster a sense of occasionhad gone out many years ago.) Nor, as far as the actual performance is concerned, does the producer’s task consist merely of suggesting a different emphasis here, a slight alteration of expression there, Some speakers "talk" better with their legs stretched out under the table; some are better with them tucked under their chair-it is his task to discover which is which. Some are much more effective standing than sitting. My own main preference is to take off my collar and tie: hence my profound relief about evening dress. Some must be calmed down, others evoked. Some, apparently, have to be positively restrained: as became common knowledge during the war, Sir Winston Churchill always made several false starts before the red light came on! (A producer told me Churchill always had his script typed in a way of his own-one phrase to a line, like blank verse: it took up a startling amount of paper.) With some speakers, the BBC may go to particular trouble. There is one university don, for instance-an author- ity on the history of the English country-side-who is most stimulating as a lecturer, but dry as dust from a script. His producer therefore always invites a small picked audience to the studio and records his talk, as delivered from brief lecture notes. It is then "tightened up" by editing the recording. When a discussion among a group is presented, the speakers are often dined beforehand. The producer then has the task, executed with even a little more than usual of the superb tact that is his main stock-in-trade, of seeing that just the right amount of drink is partaken-enough to loosen up inhibited tongues, but not to loosen them too much. = If a talk is recorded, the producer’s work may not be complete even when the recording has been made. One of many BBC employees with a highly unusual speciality is a woman I once met-in circumstances typifying the BBC’s zeal for perfection--who does

nothing else but move needles from one point to another on discs while they are actually being played. I was making a contribution to a composite programme, a "literary magazine of the air," broadcast from Aberdeen: one of the contributors, a poet reading some of his own verse, had recorded his item. At one point in his recording, he had accidentally turned over two pages of his script instead of one, resulting in a pause of three or four\seconds’ duration. Although he had made a second recording because of this, he had not read as expressively the second time as in his first attempt: thus the producer wanted to use the first recording. Few listeners, I am sure, would have noticed the pause. But the BBC would not be satisfied with anything less than the best possible. This needle-lifting specialist had been brought up all the five hundred miles from London to move the needle deftly across the pause at the vital moment. It was fagcinating to watch her at her conjuring. Previously she had marked the two ends’ of the pause on the disc with two pin-points of white ink. As always on these occasions, she lit a cigarette as the disc began to play, then bent over it, poised her hands and, using both of them, lifted the needle from one point to the other in the merest fraction of a second when the moment came. Meanwhile no one in the studio seemed able to draw a breath. Some months afterwards, the BBC recorded a conversation between a

Rugby commentator and myself concerning the All Blacks’ tour. (This was helped out by. a. producer’s trick: we conversed for a few minutes until we had become obviously fatuous, then stopped, went back to a suitable point on the record and reconsidered how we should proceed from there, then continued from that point on a fresh disc: We repeated this several times, and the resulting set of discs made up our "conversation"). This was due to be broadcast before the commentary on a notable match the following Saturday. On the day, however, bad weather caused the postponement of the match: thus the broadcast was also postponed, until several weeks later. In the meantime, however, one of my remarks became outdated. As a result, I listened carefully for the particular passage when eventually the recording was presented. Had the producer noticed the error, I wondered; and what would he do about it? I need have had no fears: when the passage came, my remark was neatly taken out so as to leave no trace. Apparently the lady with the cigarette from London had crossed my path again. There is a great deal to be said-a very great deal-for New Zealand’s system of a large number of radio stations, many of them homely little stations closely linked with the life of a small local community. For all its high quality, the BBC is rather remote. (It would, of course, be impossible on Europe’s crowded wavebands to operate a system of numerous local stations in Britain similar to the New Zealand system.) Nevertheless, one wonders if a little more attention to the broadcasting of talks as one of the literary arts would not be worth the expense of a few extra salaries for the contribution it* would make to raising the standards of New Zealand life.