Radio: Dissenters

The radio & TV industry braced itself against another wave of critics:

¶ In Philadelphia, the Rev. Everett C. Parker, director of the Protestant Radio Commission, demanded more religious broadcasts: “We will not bow before the demands that soap and cigarettes be first in people’s thinking . . . Religion is not a hobby with the American people, nor is it a hunger felt only by a few.”

¶ In Franklin County, Ohio, 600 adolescents, asked what kind of programs they would like to hear more often, chose music over cowboy shows, adventure and children’s programs, by more than 3 to 1.

¶ In Columbus, Ohio, Dr. Clyde Hissong, state film censor, was fretting because televised wrestling is “devaluating all the concepts of fair play, obedience to laws, and respect for ordinary, universally accepted ways of behaving.” What upset Dr. Hissong was not so much the recent introduction on TV of women wrestlers and midget wrestlers as the conduct of referees, who “issue warnings without penalty and in such a manner that contestants and observers conclude that it pays to break the rules.”

¶ In his new book, Radio, Television, and Society (Oxford University Press; $4.75), British-born Educator Charles A. Siepmann disposed of radio’s old argument that it is just giving the public what it wants. Wrote Siepmann: “[That] theory makes as much sense as if a large department store were to clear its shelves of all commodities except the best-selling lines.” If popular acceptance of programs is the measure of good radio, said Siepmann, then all radio is good, because Russians, Britons, Danes and Swedes listen to their radios as much as Americans.