Radio Round the World

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 34, 1 March 1935, Page 14

Radio Round the World

(GERMANY has now 37,000 lisenced radio retailers and 750 wholesalers. The manufacturers have been prohibited from producing new models of loudspeakers or receivers during the period February 1 to July 31. This is so that sales may not be prejudiced at the Leipzig Spring Fair. * Ed * Mx. VAL GIELGUD, the B.B.C. director of drama, asked listeners to write to him, and he has written an article about the 12,726 letters he received from professors, brigadiergenerals, deep-sea fishermen, the blind. and including letters from France, Germany, Sweden and Holland, Forty per cent. ran to four or more pages. The demand was for more comedy and less tragedy, and there was a notable preference for adapted stageplays ‘(Galsworthy, Ibsen, Eden Philpotts and Shakespeare were specified again and again) as opposed to plays written specially for broadcasting. The more popular of the authors of plays for radio were L. du Garde Peach and Philip Wade; Guthrie and Sieveking. who began the radio play in England as a kind of "modernistic" experiment, got it in the neck. It was vigorously denied that radio plays were too long. To the demand for "good comedy." Gielgnd replied: "Good comedy, unfortunately, is not a synthetie product, nor, as a matter of fact, is it easy to find ordinary stage comedy which can be adapted for microphone purposes. While the established comic author has usually too good a market elsewhere to write original humorous plays. for broadcasting," which is something ofan admission, soos voy