Broadcaster of the art, part 1

The use of this invention this crazy power filicide that we

have and this picture to the other end of it is fully

as broad as the use of the printing press. And no one

speaks of television as an invention which is being used by all

kinds of institutions all kinds of groups of people which affects and is affected

by virtually every sort of organization and level in

society.

I have always maintained strongly that a businessman in the

television business is a man who knows that business. I think the trouble with television is it is

not being run by business men who know the television business is being run by facilities men who

don't know the television business.

I think it would be better if we all devoted our time to trying to make every program

on the air whatever it is a better one. If it's a Western make it a good

western there's nothing wrong with a Western for relaxation. Lots of

people like westerns. Nothing whatsoever wrong with them. There is something wrong however with a bad western a

cheap chancy tawdry Western.

It is doubtful whether the present commercial matters of these media will live up to that

responsibility.

Unless the most valid and most powerful pressure not of the sensibility of the

national intelligence is brought to bear against those

voices belong to Dr Edward Rosenheim educator Sylvester Pak Weaver

broadcaster advertiser David Brinkley news broadcaster and father William

Lynch educator.

With

you.

This is I think for broadcasting a series of 13 documentary

radio programs compiled from interviews with men who make broadcasting

their business. This series is produced under a grant from the National

Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National

Association of educational broadcasters program to the

broadcaster of the art park one. And now here is your host

John Campos broadcasting means different things to different

people.

For the average listener it means news weather reports and entertainment which he picks up

from a standard broadcasting station. The business man thinks of radio and

television as a way of selling goods and services to the advertising man. These are

one long succession of listener ratings to the student of public opinion

radio and television are important as two of the four great mass media. The other

two being the newspaper and the motion picture. The educator wishes to use radio and

television to supplement the work of the classroom and to continue education beyond school years.

The idealist believes that broadcasting offers a way of creating goodwill and

understanding among nations the dictators demonstrated radio's effectiveness

in sowing suspicion and spreading distrust. As a definition

the term broadcasting means the transmission through space by means of radio

frequencies of signals capable of being received either orally or visually or

both orally or visually by the general public. There are virtually no

problems concerning these electronic impulses as such but problems do

arise when you consider what these impulses carry in the way of program material.

On this the first of two programs devoted to the broadcaster of the art we attempt to

focus attention upon and define the problems with the

textbook definition in mind. Let us turn to Dr. Edward Rosenheim

associate professor of humanities at the University of Chicago and I ask.

One of the things that we have sought to clarify the terms of use of using public interest.

From your point of view what would you see these terms mean what you think it means to broadcast in the

public interest.

Well this of course is a very very involved question. Let me

try to put it this way. One of the most tired analogies

I know is still one of the most interesting ones. It's an analogy that sprang into

existence from part of certain fatuous people when television was first invented and

when in which they compared television to the printing press and on the

whole as I say I think this is a kind of starry eyed Neal founded

comparison but the analog does hold it seems to me to this extent

television and printing press are only inventions.

Both of them are invention. Television is not an institution.

The use of this invention this crazy Polyphemus II that we

have and this picture to the other end olive is

fully as broad as the use of the printing press and one

speaks of television as an invention which is being used by all

kinds of institutions all kinds of groups of people which affects and is affected

by virtually every sort of organization and level in

society. Now I insist on this analogy only because when one

asks a question like What is the proper or improper use of

television one is really only saying what is the proper or improper use

of a particular kind of invention. If I were to turn to you and say what is the

proper use of the printing press I think you might find this a stumper.

I then that this is the reason I find your question a stumper too. I would say that in any

society for example in which an invention of this sort did

not conducive to public enlightenment the public morality

and public awareness of issues for a great deal of the time then the

invention is being misused by that society.

This is one definition of public interest and it would appear that the present use is

not in the public interest.

Turning specifically to problems of broadcasting Ralph Steidl formerly executive director of the

Joint Council on Educational Television states that it is not something that is done

but something that is not done.

I suppose one of the problems we come to have first is that the rating system

which comes up noses tends to

provide that kind of programming. I would call the lowest common denominator.

But I will say it's a common denominator kind of programming.

Yes there could be studies made not only as to the programs

people want to see or don't want to see but the

programs that people might need to see or not need to see.

I'm sure they're all areas of vacuum where the problem of

broadcasting is not one of commission but one of omission.

There are areas where we ought to be providing the kind of damage it

takes only to survive in the 20th century but to

successfully cope with it and mold it. I'm not

sure that broadcasting by and large has an

awareness a sensitivity to the problems of the world we

live them. The problems of the nation we live in. It's an easy

and comfortable area of programming but I think we have to get into it and not just

educational television. I think all kinds of television and

radio have to address themselves more and more to the realities of the

individual as he enters the world as it is. And a little less

to the delightful light entertainment

program if it is not done.

Why not.

What is the nature of the beast controlling these awesome media which prevents them from performing as

some have suggested that they should. We ask Sylvester Weaver formerly

head of NBC and now chairman of the board of McCann Erikson International that

question people who reviewed emphasis on professionalism.

The gentleman interviewed on this series and everyone. Legitimate broadcasting looks upon you

as one of the leading lights one of the showman one of the people in the know in terms of producing programs of some

quality. Is there a problem in broadcasting today in the broadcasting is run by

businessmen in the show.

I don't think it's businessman I've always maintained strongly that a

businessman in the television business is a man who knows that business. I

think the trouble with television is it is not being run by businessmen who know the television business is being

run by facilities men who don't know the television business. In other words they do not

know advertising. Remember when I went to NBC I'd been the head of an agency

twice in radio and television. And one of the top four agencies I had been

in charge of advertising and marketing for one of the top corporations using media

and broadcasting I knew the advertising business first of all and I brought eight or nine men

with me who were the heads of radio and television of the major agencies we knew our business as

far as getting money was concerned much more than anybody and there's nobody of that

stature in the networks today as my top people were. If you

go to show business. We used the best people in all the show business

fails the best legit people the best movie people the best radio people.

We use them as men who knew their own forms very well but we knew this

we manage this as communicators we knew the reporters we knew the

the arts of coverage most of us have been writers and producers and in coverage

shows we knew that form we knew how to handle it we knew how to produce it we knew how to promote it know

how to exploit it and knew where to schedule the programs so that they wouldn't get caught.

Weaver doesn't leave much doubt as to where the problem lies. As to the reason for and the

nature of broadcasting. Listen to another broadcaster better known for asking

questions rather than answering them. Mike Wallace is unequivocal as he states.

We've got to have entertainment shows and it's pretty reasonable that we have entertainment shows

for those entertainment show should not be a saturated with violence

be all the same See Olli produce.

As far as public service shows are concerned we have to have more of them and we have to have more

of them at a time when people can listen to them. I think that we should have

to have. Many more news shows. I say that the president has finally

succeeded in establishing a commission for national goals to try to

determine what our national purpose is are headed by Dr. Esther formally the president

of Brown University. It seems to me that perhaps television should just some extent anyway

reflect what our national purpose is what our national goals are. We

have too much trash on television.

We have too much inanity on television and some of the time that is spent on that can be probably

better spent in programming that is.

How to properly describe it that is sensible that is at Delta that is

meaningful.

I don't mean doll I don't mean talking I don't mean preaching. I certainly do mean

entertaining but it seems to me that we have perhaps in broadcasting have succeeded in

appealing to the lowest common denominator night in and night out

the broadcasters they have no issues other inform people give lip service

to the state and they agree with you.

They say that the broadcasting should be a cut of what has been you know please

but to do this. Cares in people is getting a

room against new computers you program for not just controversial programs.

You see it seems to me when I if I can come back to the lowest common denominator for a minute why do these

men and women but mostly men in charge of broadcasting

try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Because their purpose in

broadcasting is not broadcasting per se but the selling of goods

per se and they realize that they can reach the largest audience by a lower common

denominator of programming in other words they are using broadcasting as a device to sell goods and they

take it out of the realm of the merchandising and into the root realm of the informing and

entertaining on its own level. Then we'll get better programming. The very men who produce these

programmes don't listen wouldn't listen don't particularly want their families listen

to a good deal of what they put on the air I've heard them say so themselves.

But they figure that they're doing it for some great unwashed crowd someplace out there

with whom they have no real communion and for whom they have very little respect.

Many have been and continue to be concerned with the state of the national imagination

none more eloquently than Father William Lynch of Georgetown University who is the author of

a provocative little book called The image industries to which he now refers.

I have raised this question in the in the

last page or so all of my own

little book and I and I put it this way.

We are a great people capable of very great things but the fact is that the truth of what is being

activists is being concealed from us in very large measure. We are engaged

with a great enemy and we will find ourselves increasingly engaged in every corner of our

soul. The conflict is more than military and economic. It is and will be

primarily intellectual and spiritual. It will be ultimately a conflict between

two states of the imagination. If we consent to a mediocre and contemptible state

of the national imagination we may have a life or a battle but not for the

campaign or perhaps the next hundred years that lie ahead of us. We are already at

war but it is the first war in human history that. But before to everywhere. The

responsibility of our mass media within this in Gaige mind is so great that it is almost

incalculable so powerful of their control over our most intimate and everyday

images and therefore overall final attitudes and decisions. It is

doubtful whether the present commercial matters of these media will live up to that

responsibility unless the most valid and most powerful pressure

not of the censor but of the national intelligence is brought to bear against

concealment resulting in a world of fantasy a world of vicarious

participation rather than actual participation.

What is the ultimate effect.

We return to Dr Rosenheim and I ask well from this point of view on whom would you place the

burden of responsibility here. For me to be giving the public what it ought to have.

I mean who who are somehow to take this initiative make make certain intellectual intuitive judgments as

to what is good for the public.

Oh I think we we don't even have to put it on such a lofty level as what is good for

the public. Well let me digress for a moment because I think a digression has something to do with this

John. It seems to me that

encountering what is regarded as bad about television and we

are getting many of us including educational broadcasters educators and all the rest get

a little pious about this thing and say Well what we see seems to be bad for people now let's think

about what's good for people. And the whole thing is put on a kind of moral plane

and be absolutely candid with you. I am not worried about the use of

television or radio for subversive purposes. I'm not worried

about the immoral possibilities of the use of these media. To put it this way

I'm not worried about my kids being turned into subversives or or immoral

people or anything of that sort by anything they see on television. I'm not even worried about their being

traumatized or scared or anything of that kind.

Some people talk as though these were the great threats and when they do talk this way they're playing right into the

hands of the defendants of the status quo because the most

venal corrupt broadcaster can do would have me point out that all of it is horse

operas are morally all the villain is punished and the hero triumphs. They can

point out that that they're impeccably patriotic but that there are no subversive

ideas. They even have I suspect captive psychiatry's who proved that

a little bit of mayhem here and there as it is perfectly all right and can challenge

any parent to show that his child has permanently become a victim of nightmares as a consequence of this.

What is wrong about these things. Therefore is not is not to be assessed in these

terms. What I lament about broadcasting today is if I may use an

archaic word the total absence of taste the thing that worries

me about my kids and television is that their horizons for

thoughtful reasonable enjoyment are limited. In such an

agonizing way by what they see on television that their definition of what is

funny is established by the dreadful dreary but

now an unimaginative comic formulas that are repeated again and again. But their

notion of what is really exciting in a Drama is limited to the horse

opera or hate or the stereotypical private eye of whom we have about fifty on

each week. But their notion of tragedy is limited to a kind of death and Little Eva

business that occasionally occurs and that they're there. Their notion of

ideas is limited to a few Pat home and mother

aphorisms that occasionally come out to Marley to salt up these these programs and

that's it. See I don't think they're going to be any worse for watching all this television as

far as me being successful citizens is concerned and so on. I think they're going to have a

kind of harder time understanding and delighting in the

products of the human mind which have traditionally delighted thoughtful people in Western

civilization. Unless we do something.

Absence of taste absence of an aesthetic standard which lifts the horizons of

those participating rather than numbing the imagination by the continual pop

performances which permeate broadcasting today.

David Brinkley award winning NBC newscaster says I think it would be

better if we all devoted our time to trying to make every program on the air

whatever it is a better one. If it's a Western make it a good western there's

nothing wrong with a Western for relaxation. Lots of people like

Westerns nothing whatsoever wrong with it. There is something wrong however with a bad western a cheap

chancy tawdry Western. I think we should eliminate them if you're going to put on

Westerns put on the best it's possible to put on if you're going to put on a drama and make it the

best you possibly can if you're going to put on a quiz program nothing wrong with that either in my opinion.

Make it honest also make it entertaining and if possible informative.

Even if you were to turn to a particular facet of broadcasting you find this to be true.

Dr. S. Franklin Mac executive director of the National Council of Churches of Christ in

America says so I have great sympathy with a broadcaster who's trying to hold an audience

against the desire of some religious broadcasters to do things on

the air the same way they do them in church and the air is a different media. You don't put a book

on TV. You write a TV play. You don't transfer the stage play to TV or to

the movies you write a TV version or a movie version. What church people

are going to have to realize is when they go on the air it has to be good TV or good radio.

Or it isn't good religion. That's about the long and short of it.

But some feel that the status quo is good. John Derbyshire former FCC

chairman feel so I make the statement that America.

Has had more and better high caliber programming

than any other country in the world and I have seen it in England and France and Italy and

Japan.

And I will say that yes.

We probably got more mediocre programming but the American people have

to realize that because we just have more programming. We have 60000

hours of broadcasting in this country a day. Television and

Radio.

What would you understand the statement that you made the FCC made public in serving the

public.

You understand there are many ways in which the public interest is served the

most important is the development of the broadcasting system and the

cardinals with the traditions of the American concept of competition.

Essentially that's the American way. We do not regulate

those things which could be done best in the field of

competition.

No one would think of regulating the newspapers in this country. No one would

think to regulate in the movies or the energy or the

magazine or the authors of books. And what is essentially the

difference between them or their media and their media of mass

communication and that of broadcasting. The only difference was that

originally there was a scarcity compared to the

media today there is no scarcity. We have four to ten times more

broadcasting facilities than you have newspapers. There are only

10 metropolitan areas or 12 in this country that have three or more newspapers we have

over well I think the figure was 60.

We have 16 metropolitan areas where they have three more television stations alone

let alone a host of radio stations.

So the scarcity argument is pretty threadbare. It's

scarce in the sense that we don't have as many of

these facilities as there are as a demand it in that sense there's a scarcity

but actually this. Argument about

because there's a scarcity is why the government regulates is getting more

diluted each year. And once we get to the point where all

who wish may have a facility a radio facility a television

facility then obviously there's no reason at all for regulating programming

either that or this country is going to embark upon a course

regulating not only the expression of the stage

and of ideas political religious scientific and other

and the broadcasting field but in every media. And that I think is a distinct

danger. It's and it's a threat to our way of

life that's a retrogression to a dictatorship.

I shudder at the thought.

Did Americans choose their broadcasting system or did they choose it by

not choosing is what is being broadcast what the people want.

Dr. Paul B Ricard director of broadcasting for Wayne State University says

John I personally believe.

And I don't like it and I don't think any of us really like it.

But what you find on radio and television is a

pretty direct reflection of the cultural status of the American people.

Any broadcaster that is going to stay in business very long is going to put on what the

people want you spending all of the funds he can get his hands on to find out for sure

what the people want. And when you have a situation of

a rating showing that they do not listen to it obvious is going to come off of that. So they're doing everything they

can to find out what the people want and what you see on television is apparently what the people want.

What do you think it's a truism in our time that the people from whom you would like to hear are not

necessarily those who are prone to right.

I'm afraid that's true.

And so I guess too in my experience you get letters from what we might

harshly call here the lunatic fringe the people who are easily disturbed because these

letters tend to knock a program off the air where the man has not gotten the

response from the individuals who like the program.

Really interesting study John if you could take the letters of the station gotten a year.

Find out what kind of people wrote those letters. You would have some

understanding of the value of letters. I have a hunch that many of the programs that the

disc jockeys get are not from an adult audience for one thing

and possibly not a very responsible audience but be instinct and find out.

Another study of the results of which might be buried in some Ph.D. dissertation to

be stored in the archives of some university library does the broadcaster

want to know does he really care. David Susskind in TV's bad

boy one of the few independent producers is concerned about the controls imposed on

him from within and without the broadcasting field.

Let me ask you about the controls imposed by either advertising or taste

of the American public at all on writers. Some writers feel that they are ham strung.

Rod Serling among them. But they can say what they like to say because they must

cater to this mythological mind if you will. We don't want to hurt anybody or get

into any controversial area.

Well I think it's true in one sense certainly it's true in terms of thematic material.

There are certain controversial

powerfully argumentative themes in our country that cannot be dealt with. You could not

on network television currently with your name be Rod Serling or

George Bernard Shaw. Deal with civil rights in

a trenchant powerful kind of way. You couldn't deal with miseducation you

couldn't deal with homosexuality you couldn't do deal with any of those human

aberrations that are true and that do reflect some portions of our

cultural community.

Now thematic LEE Some stories are banned because the sponsor finds them controversial

downbeat morbid or otherwise unpalatable. Sure one

of those subjects however practically anything that can be done

with taste can be done in television today. It's just a question of finding the

sponsor who would do it or the network that would have the guts to support

its doing. Mr. Serling has

been afflicted from time to time with some petty fathering censorship.

But I think that is more the exception than the rule. The big censorship

is the censorship of theme or idea that is unfortunately

terribly true. The division on civil rights in the South

makes wholly impractical. The doing of a real

exciting dramatic story about civil rights.

So it appears that we are more concerned about the explosions of guns

rather than the explosions of ideas you've heard some of the problems of the

broadcaster of the art.. But really the fact is that there is

very little art.

You've been listening to the broadcaster of the art part one. The second in a series of

13 programs on ethic for broadcasting a radio

documentary which is investigating the current broadcasting trends

compiled from interviews with man who make broadcasting their business.

Your host was Dr. John Cambers of the Detroit Institute of Technology. Producer

for this series is Dr. Mary Ann sack of Michigan State University Oakland.

Ethic for broadcasting was produced under a grant from the National Educational Television

and Radio Center and is being distributed by the National Association of

educational broadcasters. This is the n 80 B

Radio Network.