Judge — December 1936 — page 29: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

RADIO- AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT WWANYTHING which aims to please 120,000,000 people is bound to be pretty poor—and maybe, eventually please ni trouble with life in America today; all of a sud. And that’s one media for reaching and trying to please vast audiences: radio, movie den we have discovered a new , Newspaper syn. dicated columns, newspaper comic sec- tions, tabloid dailies. This era might be called the age of hundred-millionitis. It is an age of mass production, not only of clothes hangers and hot water bot- tles, but of amusement The worst offender at hundred-mil- lionitis is radio. I'm not forgetting the fine symphonies or the excellent singers or the really good dance orchestras or the few interesting talkers brought to us by radio, but the truly great wow programs on the air are pretty apt to be tripe, and anyone with any sensibilities has to be mighty quick on the dial or he will get thoroughly nauseating with his pleasure. Set your radio on any one station for three hours and it m emetics along y give you some fine things but it will drive you to the bathroom more than once before you are through. Even some of the good symphony orchestras are accompanied and abetted by simp commercial announcers. A few radio advertisers appeal to intelligence with their entertainment, but can’t resist shooting hooey at 120,000,000 morons in their commercials. I'm willing to take some advertising with my radio entertainment. That's my way of paying for having a show piped to my living room, and, further. more, advertising correctly presented is news that I am willing to hear, but most commercials today are an insult to the intelligence of anybody over six Oozy Announcers Why CAN'T sponsors sense that radio advertising would be much more produc. tive if plausible commercial announce- ments were spoken briefly by normal, endurable, masculine human beings, rather than by the super-personality 27 BY DON HEROLD pansy or clocutionary type of announcer so prevalent today? The fine job of one $5,000.a-weck opera star on a national hook-up is, for example, exactly offset to a penny by the oozy, unctuous, sickening affectations of the announcer who accompanies her, so that I figure the sponsor gets precisely no net gain from his weekly broadcast. If the shoe clerk tried to sell us a pair of shoes in the tone of voice and with the flowery, exaggerated blah as- sumed by a lot of radio announcers, we'd poke his face and walk out of the store in disgust One of my chief whines against radio today is its effort to sweep me off my fect, its attempt to kid me into thinking I'm having a hell of a lot bet. ter time than I really am, its effort to sell me some of its prog ams as about the biggest thing that ever came into my life Well, if an advertiser spends $10,000 for a broadcast, it’s natural for him to want to give birth to a baby clephant, to want his hour or half-hour built up into something The Birth of a Nation Hur or The Second Com. ing of Our Lord, but he'd get under as big as or Ben the entrance of the musical comedy star was invariably preceded by a great fan. fare and fuss? Well, they are pulling exactly that old buckeye technique in radio today. Hooray! Hooray! Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap! Those studio audiences (the “we- want-Cantor™ type) will go into spasms of delight over stuff that would leave a paid-admission audience in icy, dis dainful silence. For instance, Phil Baker says: “When I was in France I slept in the same bed that Napoleon slept in.” His stooge counters: snore?” ‘Did Napoleon The studio audience roars, and thun. ders its applause, falls on the floor, busts its buttons. Authority in Apes Now Tunis bleat is submitted purely as a minority report. I'm merely trying to protect myself and my kind. 1 used to notice, in the old vaudeville days, that certain performers could bring down the gallery, but that the really big money stars in vaudeville were those who won not only the gallery but also caught the favor of the more intelligent minority in the dress circle. There is a certain authority in us apes that other apes ape There haven't been many programs which have reached top and bottom strata at the same time (Will Rogers’ Oy my skin a whole lot deeper if he weren't such a show-off with his show. It may be a $10,000 party to him, but it's just another hour in my life, and, after all, there are plenty of ways I can have a lot of fun in an hour for 50 cents or less. I'm objecting to the blare and blast and the noisy pomp and the hullaballoo and the orgiastic applause and hipteedoo with which so many radio programs are accompanied. (Those studio audiences are evidently composed of people who have never been any place or never had any fun before in their whole lives). Remember how, about twenty years ago, program was one, I believe). If I were a sponsor I wouldn't be satisfied with any other kind. I wouldn't think of reaching millions and, at the same time, alienating people with taste and intelli- gence. I believe, in spite of all statistics, that a program so aimed is essentially unsound. And I'm sure I wouldn't put on a thoroughly fine program of entertain ment, and then void it with sickening, unbelievable commercial announcements that would make uts!” Next time, Major Bowes and other specific cases. most listeners say Judge comicbooks.com