Radio Advertising Mars Enjoyment

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 12, 3 October 1930, Page 2

Radio Advertising Mars Enjoyment

Opinion of Dr. Lee de Forest =

A VIGOROUS plea to protect broadcasting from advertising and to put most of the advertising back in the newspapers was’ the outstanding message in the address of welcome given by Dr. Lee de Forest to the Institute of Radio Bngineers at the opening of their convention in Toronto, Ontario, says’ the "Christian Science Monitor." He also forecast that wired radio, coming to the homes without advertising, lies directly ahead. Since the institute is an engineering organisation, Dr. de Forest said many engineers have taken the attitude of "sticking to their knitting’ and confining themselves to the engineering end of the business. With this view he expressed scant patience. He continued, in. part :- "We have invented and caused to grow up not merely a marvellous electrical device to lighten man’s labour, like electric power, or to lengthen his waking hours by electric light-we ‘have found something finer, more pow-erful-farther reaching than all these -dealing intimately with every phase and age and strata of home and family and society. Warning to Industry. "Ly my inaugural address last Januaty I sought to point out a very real danger to the fullest usefulness and enjoyment which radio has power

to confer, a menace steadily growing. greater, more ruthless, more deserving of suspicion and more generally de-tested-the use of the broadcast for | direct and blatant advertising-in larger and longer doses. Subsequent observation and active inquiry has convinced me that the warning to the ra- ~ dio industry then sounded has: been justified. , "Tf we consider the prosperity of the industry alone, the possibly lessened gales of sets, the unquestionably lessened hours of listening by the public resulting from this abuse by direct ad-vertising-we engineers, dependent on. radio for our livelihood, have ample ground for emphatic protest. But there are higher, less selfish considerations, the thought that short-sighted avarice is at work to curtail the usefulness, the beneficence of radio, in the home, in the school, as a’ means of entertainment, of education, of uplift generally. Unless this is prevented we are headed straight for Gcvernment regulation, with taxation, possibly censorship, and all the evils and all the benefits of Government control. Progress in Radiocasting. "TNLESS the present deplorable conditions are remedied, the’ will rapidly hasten the entry of wired radio into our homes-entertainment freed from interference, static, fading and purged of all advertising. "This year of our first international convention coincides with the gratifying progress made in international radiocasting, and calls attention of engineers the world over to the manifold problems of short-wave communication yet to be solved. Multiple receiving antennae, a2 common receiver and automatie volume-control, possibly com-

bined with double polarised transmitted waves, of greater power, will shortly bring to pass the nightly exchange’ of foreign programmes. "We have already the international language, music, and we shall learn much to our advantage from many foreign programmes. Then indeed will be. realised the benign power of the radio » broadcast to draw. together into a common: fellowship of understanding the varied peoples of the earth, strangers and enemies no longer." After ‘discussing the Press and radio, Dr, de Forest concluded this phase of his address as follows.:"Radio’s debt to the newspaper, for daily programme notices, programme reviews, and for their generous radio sections, is beyond all computation. Unquestionably it was this astonishing interest on the part of the Press in‘ broadcasting during its early struggling days, ten years ago, which alone enabled it to survive those crucial years, until an awakened popular interest made radio self-supporting. "I sincerely feel, therefore, that the debt to-day ties heavily on radio’s side of the ledger-a debt which will be partially repaid only when certain forms of advertising most obviously ill-suited for radio’s medium go back to the printed sheet."