Stately Amenities of the B.B.C.
Influence of the Dinner Jacket on _ Broadcasting
(By
COMPTON
MACKENZIE
in the "Morning Post.")
WOMAN, a dog, and a walnut tree, the more you beat them the better they'll be. This does not seem true of the B:B.C," | It certainly does not seem true if we are to judge by the effect of a steady campaign in eertain quarters of the Press to belitte the work of the British Broadcasting Corporation ever since it; was changed from a company into a corporation. I read in some organ the other day that the programmes of the B.B.C, had never been as bad as they had been lately, which seems a most preverse reply to the consistent beating the programmes have been getting from their critics. , If a prominent member of the staff leaves because he has been offered a larger salary elsewhere, his resignation is accorded as much publicity as might be the abdication of a monarch. Tf a new transmitting station is opened and obliterates the ambiguous reception of Budapest in a Notting-hill drawing-room, the complaint of the injured owner of some obsolete receiv-ing-set is given as much space as though the new transmitting station at Brookman’s Park had blown him and his whole family across the road into the drawing-room opposite.
IFE must be one dam’ thing after another at Savoy Hill, to judge by the number of interviews that the officials there seem to spend their time in granting to representatives of the Press. who, it may be added, never seem to derive the slightest satisfaction from these interviews, being evidently always thwarted by the urbane discretion of the interviewéd. The sad thing about this irrational and promiscuous criticism is that it tends to make it impossible for anybody to criticise the B.B.C. rationally and particularly. Once you get into people’s heads that the B.B.C. is always wrong, you will find it difficult to get them to pay attention when it would serve a useful purpose to demonstrate that it very often is wrong. I, for instance, might personally wish to suggest that the spirit of compromise which animates the pro-
grammes is not an entirely admirable But I should hesitate to do so, because I should feel I was attacking one of those particularly British traits which makes the B.B.C. the typically British affair it is. Indeed, if I wished to go bogy-hunt-ing I could draw a splendid bogy at onee by putting forward the theory that the campaign against the B.B.C, was being worked in the interest of pan-Americanism, to whose ambitions. the existence of the B,B.C, must present itself as a perpetual menace, Certain it is that the attempt to Americanise our culture will never succeed so long as the B.B.C. molds out against it. . T may not be generally known that the announcers:have to wear a dinner jacket- and a black tie in the evening, and I think that it ought to be generally known, for if it were generally known it would have a _ reassuring effect on the listening public. The Hnglishman who always dresses even when he is alone has had a great influence on the destiny of civilisation ; and it seems pathetic that so many Englishmen who do dress for dinner should still be supposing that wireless is an amusement confined, so far as they are aware, to the servant's hall. It is really time these gentlemen woke up and realised that exactly the same convention which leads them to change for dinner every evening rules the life of an announcer of the B.B.C. It must no longer be assumed by what, with a certain rashness, I will call the educated classes that radio is a new toy to amuse what, with a rashness equal to my own, they consider their inferiors. It is going to be a difficult task when the present charter of the Corporation expires in a few years’ time to keep it from hecoming an unsernnuious weapon in the hands of those who have realised only too well its baser potentialities. {OR some time now I have heen sadly but surely driven into thinking that the University of Cambridge represents better my notion of what a University should be than my own University of Oxford. But the other day I heard a story that made me suppose Oxford has not changed so qauch as I was beginning to fear it ad, A prominent official of the B.B.C. recently visited his old college, and on being asked by one of the dons what he was doing now, replied that he was interested in wireless. "Oh!" was the comment, "next time you come up T | suppose you'll be telling us that you have something to do with rollerskating." This was reassuring. .Oxford could not yet be quite such a Detroit of Hurope as I had been supposing. Still, while it is pleasant to reflect that the abolition of compulsory Greek, ! the disastrous effect of which on my
University I have the painful gratification of remembering that I prophesied as an undergraduate in my own magazine, did not succeed in dispelling the yery last enchantment of the Middle Age, it is not so pleasant to find a habit of mind suitable enough for dons being maintained in the world of unenchanted existence. I should like to suggest, if I may do so without impertinence in these trueblue columns, that the handling of the microphone by leaders of the Conservative Party during the last election campaign might have been less inefficient and less ineffective if they had given themselves the trouble to study its peculiar psychology. Y own belief is that, within a com-, paratively short time, we shall | be finding that, however mightier than" the sword the pen may remain, the yoice may prove mightier than either. At any rate that is a proposition which should be pondered by thinking men and women before they dismiss it without a moment’s consideration as fantastic. . The B.B.C. is only a matrix as yet, but it is the matrix of what may he a wonderful gem. The cutter and the polisher must work upon it and give it the significant form it lacks at present. It has the power to be, as I think it was Mr. J. H, Squire who first observed, a real Ministry of the Fine Arts. Will it become that? Or will it slowly. degenerate into a mere hive of industrious bureaucrats trying to extract honey from artificial -flowers? Wither of these developments is possible in its present state. The business of the educated. public is to give it intelligent support, and most imperative of all it is the business of artists and scientists and men of affairs not to appear before the microphone like self-conscious grown-ups at a children’s party.
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Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 24, 27 December 1929, Page 10
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1,137Stately Amenities of the B.B.C. Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 24, 27 December 1929, Page 10
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