Variety or Quality in Programmes

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 41, 27 April 1928, Page 5

Variety or Quality in Programmes

The most appropriate comment that we have encountered on the vexed pros gramme question of quality or variety comes from Los Angeles in an interview with Robert Hurd, KFI’s programme director. This shows that despite America’s greater size and resources her broadcasting stations are encountering exactly the same comments from Hsteners that are being experienced in New Zealand, "Tully eighty per cent. of the people registered with American broadcast stations as available radio entertainers are hopelessly mediocre," says Robert Hurd, KFI programme director. "Of the remainder, ten per cent. may be rated fair, five per cent. satisfactory, and five per cent. Al." "Shall programme directors be governed by the dictates of variety or those of quality in building their programmes?" he continues. "Shall we eliminate the eighty per cent. at once and build our programmes for quality and quality alone, regardless of how often the good artists appear, or shall we run the sad and weary gamut of mediocrity, for the sake of the possible variety demanded by a mythical, restless audience? . "If we grant that all artists are not equally good, and still insist on using the inferior ones, then we have the ridiculous situation of a station broadcasting, knowingly, and with malice aforethought, inferior programmes by inferior people for no other reason than not to bore John Doe and his radio-party, Poor entertainment by new people will annoy Mr. Doe and his guests more thoroughly than will good entertainment by the same people he heard last night. To-day’s metropolitan newspaper is made up of about forty per cent. standard material, while the remaining space is filled with news very like yesterday’s, written by the same men who wrote yesterday’s news, This’ week’s Satevepost is very like last week’s, with the same type of cover and the same type of stories. Would its editors choose in place of a good story by an old author, a mediocre story by a new author just for the sake of variety? The motion picture industry constantly seeks new faces, but does it as a matter of routine choose people it knows are inferior to its stars to be featured in each new picture just for the sake of variety ?" "My personal belief,’"? Mr. Hurd concludes, "is that the variety bugaboo is responsible for much of the hog wash that nightly dilutes our nation’s broadcasting. Needless to say the elements of each night’s programmes may and should be diversified. ‘Small stations in small communities may find it necessary to use their good artists nightly to maintain a certain standard. Larger stations in musical centres with more people to draw from may broadcast for longer periods before repetition becomes necessary. All sta« tions, however, are now using too many people in the estimation of those who have studied the situation. The broadcaster’s watchword should not be ‘Is It Different?’ but ‘Is It Good ?’."’