"What Broadcasting Means to Me"

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 47, 8 June 1928, Page 16

"What Broadcasting Means to Me"

SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE RESTORED CONFESSIONS BY ORDINARY LISTENERS | A COMPETITION was recently held in Britain for the best short ‘es-. say on "What Broadeasting Has Meant to Me." Many thousands of entries were received, and the work of judging the three winners was a difficult one. ]{XTRACTS from the two first prize _ Winners are worth quoting :-The of the first prize writes: "I live in a dull, drab colliery village, as far removed from real country as from real city life-a bus ride from third-rate entertainments and a considerable train journey from any educational, musical or social advantages of a first-class order. In such an atmosphere life becomes rusty and apathetic. Into this monotony comes the introduction of a good wireless set and my little world is transformed. Music, grave, gay, Sparkling or haunting, floats through the house, excluding all environments and all dull thoughts. . . 2’. his winning essay pictures vividly the deadening sameness of life in a grimy North Country village and the blessed outlet which broadcasting means to those who must face it, month after month, "{ORE than all," goes on the writer, | "proudeasting has renewed and. increased my admiration for my mative England, its religion, its morals, its high standards . . it makes me feel that each of us is at least a tiny link in the living history of a mighty race, wide-flung to the extremities of. the earth. It has turned a telescope upon ‘self,’ through which I might gain a right prospective. Week by week we hear appeals for individuals, institutions, suffering in every shape and form, and I am brought to realise that I am not a well-known person in a small community only-but an atom in a mighty system, with mighty responsibilities." The winner of the gecond prize is a bedridden inmate of a poor-law infirmary, who, in nineteen years, has only been taken four times outside its wallx. "How often have I wished to die during those years of solitude with pain, suffering and death around me .. . I am quite content now to live another nineteen years under the same conditions as I do now, so long as I have my set, which is very precious to me." The third winner holds that "Broadcasting has restored to me the lost spirit of adventure and self-entertainment . broadened my outiook on life . . my mind has recovered 2 good deal of its former elasticity."