World Radio News

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 28, 23 January 1931, Page 2

World Radio News

"Tab age of international broadcasting is on us long before we are ready for it,’ remarks an English writer, deploring the lack of a universal language. "The first step toward a universal tongue is to find from among the welter of sounds in the whole realm of speech those that are common to all languages-if there be any, ‘There is no single language that can be understood by the whole world, and there appears not the smallest particle of hope ‘that we are within centuries of attaining this very desirable end." # * « A LIFEBOAT reported to be the fastest in the world, was recently jaunched at Dover. It was specially designed to rescue aeroplanes. which. have been forced down at sea. A further innovation was the fitting of a special telephone transmitter for .communication with coastguard stations. BS spite of many denunciations of "synchronised": transmissions, that is, transmissions by several low-power stations of the same programmes on the same wave-length, there is a scheme in America to set up a network of such stations throughout the country. Ten ‘companies are to sponsor the evening programmes, which are to be conduct-.

ed as all-the-evening entertainments, and not as sections of an hour, or half, or quarter of an hour, as is the practice with most American broadcasters at present . * € E hear much against the American type of programme, with’ its advertising propaganda, so much 989, in fact, that we are rather inclined::to pity the unfortunate American listenier, So it comes as rather a surprise to learn that someone-even when that someone is the president of the American N.B.C.-goes so far as to warn Americans to beware of adopting such a broadeasting system as that favoured in England and Australia. In his o words: "Broadcasting in the Unit States, unlike that in DWngland did Australia, where it is taxed, must remain a free institution. It is sponsored programmes which have saved the industry from extinction, by giving to the public that which.it desires to hear. Vying with one another to gain the attention of the listener, our broadeasting stations slowly better themselves, for they are as envious of their audiences as publishers are of . their circulation."