One Man Cannot Plan 365 Programmes a Year

Radio Record, Volume VII, Issue 7, 25 August 1933, Page 15

One Man Cannot Plan 365 Programmes a Year

To the Editor. Sir,-From the suggestions and criticisms in your pages it is fair to state that most healthy-minded people feel the lack of some vital element in radio programmes, ‘That this is due to the absence of imagination, personality, and that indefinable something that possesses the power to express emotion would be a sane and reasonable explanation. The absence of human emotion from radio is finding expression in criticism, (Rather

this faculty at the expense of the sympathetic understanding of true art.) "The sacred soul of self-expression," to quote the president of the Wellington Competitions Society, "must struggle against the forces of acquired learning and barren cynics, and grow inward instead of outward." When it is remembered that Ibsen took two years over a play (or in other words, two years to evolve several hours’ amusement), and poets a lifetime to produce a few lines of verse, it is not only absurd to expect one man to produce 365 programmes a year, but it’s a sign of a decadent mentality in the people of the a failing of British peoples who exploit country who even suggest its possibility. Some day radio programmes will. rise to a place among the immortals in art. when every human | emotion is expressible. Your method of getting ideas is good, but beware of its abuse. Often encouragement (not money, but the old laurel wreath) to those who have ideas results in their work -being put-over: the

air, giving them that atmosphere of encouragement so necessary to the true artist. Don’t overdo it, it’s British I know, but it’s not nice, and only turns artists into critics -I am, etc.,

GEORGE

MILLSON

Blenheim,