Radio Programmes

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 17, 7 November 1930, Page 32

Radio Programmes

(To the Hditor.) (VAX I be permitted to.express a few comments on the programmes of the Broadcasting Company’s stations. I realise that this is a subject that must be rather outworn by now, but there is one aspect that appears to have.escaped general’ notice. In the first place I wish to say that it is my firm opinion that any listener who is dissatisfied with the programmes as generally transmitted at present ought to sell his'radio set and buy a gramophone, when he will be able to please himself what he listens to. It is rather amusing, to say the least of it, to read the multitude of diametrically opposed opinions that one reads on any particular programme. To the jazz addict I would say that I personally have found it quite possible to listen to jazz any night I wished to. But quite apart from whether Smith complains that he has to listen to too much highbrow stuff, the Broadcasting Company must realise that it has a duty in respect of the items it presents. Our "A" stations, as the national representatiyes of our broadcasting stations, ought to have an educational influence as well as merely fulfilling the position of entertainers, and the dissemination of good music should be one of their chief aims. My own particular complaint is this: I have been a constant listener now for many months, but I could count the number of times I have heard a Kreisler recording on the fingers of one hand. I have never heard a Grieg Concerto or a Beethoven Sonata, I heard a Gilbert and Sullivan only once, and that from a "B" station; I mean anything like the complete: score of an opera. I have been personally associated with a private station, and I-know that the owner has scores of requests for ,operatic pieces of all descriptions. But I have heard the "Stein Song" on a number of occasions that must be getting near three figures. I have heard "Smiling Irish Byes" till I feel like committing murder every time I hear it now. How about the Broadcasting Company putting over the score of say one of the operas of the "Ring des Nibelungen," or a Beethoven sonata, or even some really good talking records instead of the interminable John Henry

records, which are by the way an excellent illustration of the fact that lack of variety is one of the most insufferable things in life. We have to put up with enough mediocre music in the way of raucous Americanisms which dominate the talkie stage. It has become a platitude now that most persons who dislike the so-called highbrow music do so because they do not’ get the chance to hear better. Let not the Broadcasting Company forget itself so far as to make the remoter ether resound to the interminable strains of negroid music.-Axon (Wairoa). [In complying with requests such as that of our correspondent, the Broadcasting Company, and for that matter "B" stations, are opposed by the Performing Rights Association. Some of the cases cited are typical examples of what the broadcasters must not broad-cast..-Eid.]