Music: Radio Art

Radio listeners, being human, want the best of everything. But they don’t always get it. The nightly ether-music is too often indirect advertising. Prudent musicians object to the broadcasting of their programs; people won’t buy seats in stuffy concert halls if they can stay at home and listen to the same thing. For these and allied reasons, the Chicago Civic Opera will not broadcast its performances this Winter.

A solution to this distressing situation has been offered by the National Association of Broadcasters of New York. It is a plan that has already worked out successfully in England. Every piece of radio apparatus that is sold to the public is to be decorated with a stamp. These stamps are to represent one-half of 1% of the retail price of the apparatus. The purchaser pays the stamp tax as his contribution to the support of the “talent” he will hear.

It is expected that radio sales will approximate $400,000,000 during the current year. This would yield a stamp-income of at least $1,500,000 per annum—enough to hire, in the words of the announcement, “the best-known performers of the stage and concert platform.” The plan is recommended by a special committee appointed by E. F. McDonald, President of the Broadcasters’ Association. It was considered the best of over 100 submitted by various radio organizations. It will undoubtedly be adopted at the Broadcasters’ Annual Convention in September and will then come before Secretary Hoover, “Dictator of U. S. Radio,” when the National Radio Conference holds its grand powwow.