London Calling

Two junketing Britons arrived in Manhattan this week to take an intensive look at U.S. radio & TV. As members of Lord Beveridge's ten-man Committee of Enquiry, which will make recommendations on the future course of the British Broadcasting Corp., they have the job, among others, of classifying and analyzing the differences between BBC and U.S. broadcasting.

What the committeemen think about the U.S. brand will finally be incorporated in their report. It may surprise U.S. radiomen who confidently believe that the U.S. leads the world. Justin Miller, president of the U.S. National Association of Broadcasters, has dismissed British and all foreign radio as "dull, lifeless dishwater . . . and great doses of government propaganda."

Compared to U.S. broadcasting, BBC is not so much dull as different--in purpose, outlook and intention. Unlike U.S. radio, which was born into a competitive jungle and just grew into a brassy-voiced maturity, British radio was cradled in monopoly and spoon-fed throughout its formative years by a pious, iron-willed Scot named John Reith. BBC gave its listeners, not what they wanted, but what Director General Reith thought they needed. To use radio just for entertainment, said Reith, would be a "prostitution of its power" and "an insult to the intelligence of the public."

Today, twelve years after Lord Reith's resignation, BBC still tries to broadcast "the best in every department of human knowledge, endeavor and achievement," but it has somewhat relaxed the high, moral tone that accompanied Reith's stewardship. Under its present director general, Sir William Haley, Sundays are no longer given over wholly to the sermons and serious music that drove 60% of British listeners to tune in Radio Luxembourg and Radio Normandie.

Light, Home & Third. A British listener, fiddling with the knobs on his set, can pick up three and sometimes four programs. They come to him, not over competing networks, but on three interrelated radio services called the Light, the Home, and the Third Program. In addition, each of the six regions of Great Britain (the North, Midlands and West of England; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) has a BBC station that broadcasts local shows, news and sporting events or programs in Welsh and Gaelic.

Director General Sir William Haley sees the three basic services as a cultural pyramid up which the listener is led "from good to better." Ideally, listeners begin this cultural mountain climb by tuning into the Light Program. As its name implies, the Light is aimed at the great mass of people who would rather listen to Irving Berlin than Johann Sebastian Bach. Of all British radio, it bears the closest resemblance to U.S. network radio. The Light's Mrs. Dale's Diary has some of the flavor and all the popularity of The Aldrich Family; Have a Go! features a quiz master named Wilfred Pickles who resembles a more genial Groucho Marx; on such comedy shows as Educating Archie, Ray's a Laugh and Take It from Here, the labored pun flourishes even more richly than in the U.S. (sample: "What are we hunting for?" "Herd of deer, my lord." " 'Course I've heard of deer--big things like horses with a hatrack on their foreheads.").

Listeners who have survived the Light can graduate to the Home Service, which tries to steer a middle course between popularity and culture. The Home offers variety shows, symphonies, drama, news and lectures. At the very peak of the pyramid, in an atmosphere too rarefied for the average listener, is the Third Program. Its minuscule audience listens to verse dialogues from Walter Savage Landor, talks on the fossil apes in Kenya, and obscure compositions for the viola da gamba and harpsichord.

The roles of the three services were indicated, in a recent issue of the New Statesman and Nation, by Olga Katzin, who suggested that BBC programing for Doomsday would shape up as follows:

"LIGHT

For Older Children: a new play by Du Garde Peach, 'An Awfully Big Adventure.'

Massed Military Bands will give a Final Fanfare, 'Salute to Empire,' followed by the Last Post.

Mrs. Dale's Diary ... will be concluded.

HOME

A Choral Half Hour by the BBC Choir will give a new arrangement of Crossing the Bar, One More River, and Heading for the Last Roundup.

Any Questions? will be replaced by a short sermon by the head of Religious Broadcasts: 'Have You Forgotten Anything?'

The Governor of the Bank of England will . . . discuss how to wind up an estate.

THIRD

The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will debate: 'Should We Have Had a Coalition?'

Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch will talk on Modal Music, with Ancient Instruments.

A new selection of Epitaphs from the Esquimaux will be read by Mr. Robert Speight."

Dead Air. Despite its toplofty position, the Third Program does not stand in complete isolation from the other two services. Third Program shows like Canterbury Tales (read in modern English but with interpolations of the original Chaucerian verse) and Cosmologist Fred Hoyle's talks on The Nature of the Universe have been popular enough to be rebroadcast on the Home Service. Similarly, outstanding Home shows are often repeated on the Light. But the Third still retains what, for Americans, used to be one of the most trying features of all British radio: long stretches of "dead air." If a program ends two or three minutes before another is scheduled to begin, the Third occasionally treats the listener to what U.S. radiomen regard as a catastrophe: silence.

Under BBC's wing, television got off to a world head start in 1930. But British TV screens went blank during the war and the U.S. has since taken an overwhelming quantitative lead. From its studios in London's Alexandra Palace and Lime Grove, BBC today telecasts over a single channel to Britain's 450.000 TV sets. Each morning there is an hour-long demonstration film so that TV dealers will have something to show prospective buyers. In the afternoon, there is either a good British or French movie or a women's program containing news of cooking, clothes, music, new books and politics. Creative talent is concentrated in the evening hours when viewers may see ballet, plays of Shakespeare, Shaw or Priestley, or specialized shows like Matters of Life & Death, on which outstanding doctors give detailed explanations of modern medical techniques. By 1954, BBC hopes there will be enough TV sets and transmitters (there are now only two) so that TV will be available to 87% of the population.

Old School Tie. Though a monopoly, BBC is neither directly owned nor controlled by the government. It is set up as a public corporation under a Royal Charter that is normally renewable every ten years. The Postmaster General, who controls all of Britain's communications, may prevent anything from being broadcast. But he has never exercised his right of censorship.

Control of BBC is vested in a seven-man board of governors appointed by the King (actually by the Prime Minister). Even under a Labor government, the board has an old school tie atmosphere that filters down through all echelons. BBCmen work hard and enthusiastically for very little money, and the revenue for their modest salaries comes almost entirely from the listening public. Each Briton pays -L-1 a year for his radio license fee or -L-2 for his TV set. Additional income pours in from BBC's impressive list of publications, which accept advertising even though BBC does not. For the year ending March 1950, on an income of -L-11,031,791, BBC showed a net profit (-L-1,099,572), for the 18th consecutive year (BBC's extensive overseas broadcasts in 44 languages are paid for by government grant).

In the U.S., new radio shows come on the air and old shows go off largely at the whim of advertisers. BBC has no sponsored shows, but it has Audience Research, a comprehensive survey system that dwarfs such U.S. research organizations as Nielsen, Hooper and Pulse. Every day, the Audience Research staff interviews a 3,000-man segment of the British public to find out what shows, if any, they listened to. Periodical reports are made on individual shows with listeners specifying what they like and don't like, as well as how they would rate individual performers.

Deep Roots. If the size of the listening audience is a true measure of a radio system's popularity, BBC outranks U.S. radio. Of Britain's 50 million people, 48 million are estimated to listen to BBC every week. Six million listeners (the equivalent of 18 million in the U.S.) heard Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra; more than 7,000,000 listened for eight nights to a series of talks on atomic energy; Comedian Wilfred Pickles has an audience of 12-14 million, relatively far more than that of any U.S. comic.

Equally impressive are the figures for BBC publications. The U.S. has nothing to match BBC's 40-50-page weekly Radio Times, a listing of programs and gossip about the stars, whose 8,226,289 circulation makes it the second largest periodical in the world.* Even The Listener, another BBC weekly devoted almost entirely to reprints of talks that have been given on the BBC, and mostly on the erudite Third Program, is bought regularly by 150,000 Britons. A typical issue contained articles on Korea in World Politics, Kant's Influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge, The Music of Egon Wellesz and Impressions of Canada. Among other BBC publications is BBC Quarterly, which is so resolutely highbrow that even a BBC official admitted, "Few people read the damned thing."

During the war, BBC sank its roots deep in the nation. The famed Nine O'Clock News, with its calm, considered announcement of both victories and defeats, was heard in most of Europe as well as in all of Britain. BBC's aplomb was not ruffled even when a delayed-action Nazi bomb plunged into the fourth floor of Broadcasting House during a nine o'clock newscast. Announcer Bruce Belfrage paused; a voice behind him was heard to say, "It's all right," and Belfrage went coolly on with the news.

Another wartime staple was Comedian Tommy Handley, star of ITMA ("It's That Man Again"--TIME, Oct. 22, 1945). Handley's rapid patter of jokes and comment, punctuated by the slammed-door entrances and exits of his large cast, made his show the favorite of the Royal Family as well as of the British public. ITMA was called, perhaps over-enthusiastically, "the only thing that kept Britain alive" during the blitz.

Liven Up. Not all Britons are unreservedly satisfied with BBC. Last month, a mild-looking young woman heaved a brick through a Broadcasting House window, explained: "I felt BBC needed livening up a bit." Many Britons resent BBC's papa-knows-best attitude and dislike its general air of leading benighted listeners by the ear into a cultural promised land. And BBC's hard-working staff and entertainers grumble at their low salaries and would welcome a share in the profits that commercialism would bring.

But for all its stodginess and evangelical atmosphere, BBC seems to satisfy most of its listeners. Last year, when the British Institute of Public Opinion asked if BBC should be replaced by commercial broadcasting, Britons voted 51% for continued BBC monopoly. Sixteen percent had no opinion, and only 33% wanted U.S.-style radio. At the end of this year, when Lord Beveridge's committee presents its recommendations, there is every likelihood that BBC will go on for another ten years very much as it is today.

* The first: Britain's sex-and crime-laden News of the World with 8,382,056 readers.

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