What Does the Public Want?

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 12, 5 October 1928, Unnumbered Page

What Does the Public Want?

is absurd, says St. John Ervine im this article, in "The Radio Times," to suppose that the public, can ever be in agreement as to what it wants. Tastes differ profoundly. Those who should see to it that they give only the best, for the The motto of the listener should be, briefly, ‘I'll tolerate as a whole, are responsible for providing entertainment best pays in that it always outlasts the worst. your tosh, if you’ll tolerate mine !"

HAT does the public waut ? That is the question which all entertainers have been asking ever since the original Morality piece was performed in the Garden of Eden, and was booed off the stage. Someone has answered it, but not satisfactorily, with the assertion that the public does not know what it wants until it gets it. If that be true-and it is largely truethen the business of entertainment is entirely a matter of luck; and a perfectly good entertainment may be a calamitous failure merely because it happens to be produced at the wrong time. How is one to account for the fact that a clever comedy, ‘‘The Road to Rome," should receive so little support from the play-going public that it was withdrawn after a run of a fortnight? Some critics have ascribed its failure to its title, saying that the public regarded it as (a) a proselytising piece, or (b) a dull, historical piece; while others asserted that the theatre in which the play was produced was too large, or that the preliminary publicity was inadequate, or that the time of year was the wrong time. Any or all of these explanations may be right. I suppose there are idiots in the world who imagine that a play called "The Road to Rome" must be either an awful warning against the errors of the Roman Catholic Church or an attempt to persuade weak Protestants to desert the faith of their fathers. I suppose, ‘too, that there are want-wits who think

that any play which is not aout cocktails must be dull. When Miss Heather Thatcher took a play called "Quest" to Sheffield, a member of her company talked about it to a young person in a hairdresser’s shop in that city. The actress thought she might do some useful propaganda for her play by talking of it to the young person who, after she had listened for a few minutes, exclaimed, "Oh, it isn’t a musical comedy, then!" ‘‘No," the actress replied, "it’s a play !" The young person expressed her disappointment. What she liked was musical comedy. Anyhow, what sort of a play was "Quest"? The actress told her, A ery of pain burst from the young person’s lips. ‘"‘Aren’t there any posh clothes in it?" she moaned. ‘No,’ the actress answered. "Then I shan’t go," the young person said. ‘Fancy ! Not a musical comedy, and no posh clothes in it!’ That is the sort of playgoer that grows in Sheffield, and managers can easily make up their minds about the sort of entertainment they must offer that poor fool on whose education hundreds of pounds have obviously been wasted. The woman would have been as well if she had never been educated at all! I take it that the public want good entertainment, but that It cannot tell what is good entertainment until it has enjoyed it. I know what a good meal it, but I cannot tell whether the meal T am about to eat is good until I have eaten it. The cook has to chance her luck with me, and she may be unfortunate enough to find that I am the single person in the world who cannot eat meals cooked

by her. If she offers me a bowl of Scotch broth-the finest soup in the world-in the middle of July, I am unlikely to thank her for it as heartily as I should do if she offered it to me in the middle of December; and if I am invited to witness a performance of ‘‘Ghosts" by the best company in England on a fine afternoon in the merry month of June, I may reply, "Do you know, I think Vl go and gather me nuts and may instead!" There must, I think, be some regard shown for the season and the temper of the time, but not, I suggest, too much regard for them. It will not do to lower the standard when the mood is unexacting’ because there may be difficulty in raising it again; and on the whole it is better to offer the best you have, even if no one wants it, than to offer your worst, because you will find, when the public has become sated with imbecility, that you will not easily be able to improve upon it. When the taste has been ruined, people do not turn from bad stuff to good stuff; they turn to different stuff; and if managers of theatres persist in supplying ‘‘dud’" entertainments, a time will inevitably: come when the very people who demanded them will cease to ask for them. When it comes, they will not say, "Give us good stuff!’ They will conclude that you have nothing but bad stuff to sell, and will seek for their entertainment in other places than yours. And what is true of the theatre-managers is true of all other entertainers. Periodically I read letters in the newspapers from people, generally anor ymous, complaining of the B.B.C. programmes. These complaints amount to this: I do not like classical music (or concert parties or talks, or dance music, or whatever it may be), so why should there be any classical music in the programmes? --(Continued on page 4.)

What Does the Public Want

(Continued from front cover.)

The man who leves jazz seems to imagine the B.B.C. exists solely for his entertainment. He pays his two-pence-halfpenny per week, and he thinks that he ought to receive twentyfive shillings’ worth of his particular sort of pleasure in return for it. The severe gentleman who cannot listen to anything more frivolous than Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony frowns heayily when he hears that his twopencehalfpenny per week is being spent, in part, on enabling Low Brow Bill or No Brow Bessie to hear the Savoy Orpheans, while the person who loves concert parties can scarcely contain himself when he reflects that other people are being treated-at his expense, mind you!-to accounts of native life in New Guinea. I do not know how many millions of people listen to wireless programmes. Nobody knows. But it is obvious that the millions are many, and that no human being can possibly devise a programme that will please the lot. So we all have to compromise. I will tolerate your tosh if you will tolerate mine. There is, in brief, no means whereby any person in author~ ity. can discover what it is that the public wants, because there is no such thing as THE public, if by that expression we mean a collection of persons all with the same tastes; and the most that any man can do is to give what seems to him to be the best kind of entertainment in its own line. If he finds that there are people who like jazz b.. .s and people who hate them, but like chamber music; and people who enjoy talks and debates, and people who detest them, but enjoy concert parties; and people who love broadcast plays, and »eople who cannot listen to them, but like to be given .- instruction in French or Italian-then, "" surely, the best thing that he can do is to satisfy all these tastes to the best of his ability and hope that he will please all of them to some extent. The public wants the best that it can get, but it does not always want the same best, even when it appears to be unanimous about its need. I often say, in connection with the theatre, that no man ean tell what sort of play will be popular-he would soon become a millionaire if he could--but that any intelligent man can tell what is a good play and what is a bad play; and in the long r the man who

persists in offering -vhat seems to him to be the best stuff will do better than the man who runs about looking for,what is likely to be popular or cyni cally offers bad stuff in the be lief that the bad is generally the most profitable. For good stuff will.out- | last bad stuff. It may not be demanded to-day but it will certainly be demanded to-morrow; and it will continue to be in demand long after the bad stuff is dead and damned. ma