DEFEATING ITS OWN ENDS

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 26, 4 January 1935, Page 5

DEFEATING ITS OWN ENDS

SIGNS are multiplying that radio advertising faces a rising tide of public resentment in the United States. Average sponsors may not realise to what extent receivers are becoming silent, when strictly commercial programmes are on the air. Advertisers seem increasingly importunate. And the penalty of listening to an orchestra, or a. comedy sketch, is too often a series of explosive admonitions to go out and buy a certain brand of sodp, or cereal, or cigarettes-and to do it now. The idea seems to be to spur listeners to action by advice that grows ever more strenuous. For many the action is that of shutting off the receiver altogether, and curling up with a good book or magazine. Such things are better regulated in various Euro--pean nations, as in Italy, Denrhark, the Netherlands. Great Britain holds so tight a rein over radio advertising as practically to prohibit it. Perhaps some way may be found in the United States whereby radio, an agency existing primarily for people's pleasure and instruction, may also serve legitimate commercial interests, without driving away permanently the thousands of Americans who are now deserting it.