Talk or Lecture?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 914, 15 February 1957, Page 17

Talk or Lecture?

gh iab 3 what is it that distinguishes a good radio talk from a lecture? Is it merely more colloquialisms and _ less formality in the radio speaker? Or is it perhaps an ability to insert instinctively some of those normal speech hesitancies and even slips which mark ordinary conversation, and thus to suggest relaxation and disguise the presence of a script? Some radio speakers used to lecturing, but not to the microphone, tend to be fluent but formal, incisive but categorical, interesting but impersonal, like two University lecturers heard this week. Thomas Rive in his stimulating Whither Music? series made many admirable points with the assurance of a practised lecturer, but his slightly remote manner was at times at odds with a sometimes wryly amusing script; Dr. Max Charlesworth at the end ofa challenging, packed and admirably organised series, Philosophers in Revolt, compelled attention by his cogent reasoning rather than by vivacity of manner, Both are potentially fine radio speakers, having clarity, smoothness, and ideas. All they lack seems to be experience. It is to be hoped they are allowed to acquire it, since there are radio speakers’ around with experience, but quite without clarity, smoothness or ideas.