KEEPING IN TOUCH

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 19, 23 November 1934, Page 5

KEEPING IN TOUCH

‘[N the editorial note above we refer to the time when the Broadcasting Board was new in office and criticism of programmes was invited. The "Radio Times" (London) comments:on this necessity for keeping listeners in touch with the broadcasting authorities. The article says: The fact is that this lack of direct response from the audience is a disadvantage shared by nearly all those who are appealing to large masses of people in the modern world. | The box-office is no sure criterion, otherwise every film and‘every play produced by commercial managements would be a financial success. One play succeeds, but it gives no recipe for sué¢cess; the next, cut to the same model, may as easily fail. The box-office. registers results; it ‘anuot explain how they are obtained. With 6,000,000 license-holders, British broadcasting is appealing to a public far greater than that of a newspaper, more diverse than that of a film. "There is no specialised public for broadcasting; it cuts across all classes, transcends all boundaries of habit and income, country and town. You can no more use the measuring-tape on such an audience than you. can. predict a race result. from the book of form. . 3 cts The B.B.C. has its sources of guidance. as it has always had. Letters from: listeners; well-informed corament in the Press; the experiences of its staff (there are many hundreds of them.:and they have contacts in every walk of life). In the last resort there is the growth of wireless licenses as a final vote. But the best safeguard for the aunlity of broadeasting lies in the broadeasters themselves. The only safe policy. for, a broadeasting corporation is the . poliey that the B.B.C. has always striven to earry out, and He is to make everything that is broadcast the best of its ind,