Columbia's Playhouse

Studio spectators at a radio broadcast help to create atmosphere with their laughter and applause but often prove a vexing nuisance to producers and performers. When National Broadcasting Co. moved into its elaborate quarters in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center in 1933 it installed a special auditorium where 1,400 broadcasting enthusiasts could be seated without fear of disturbing programs. Last week President Paley of Columbia Broadcasting System followed suit by moving his studio into a regular theatre, the long-vacant Hudson Playhouse, off Broadway, which had been renovated and equipped for broadcasting.

Some 1,100 curious Manhattanites, including many a stage and radio celebrity, were on hand for the initial broadcast in Columbia's Radio Playhouse. Huge amplifiers were suspended from the ceiling, a row of microphones strung across the stage. Visible to the audience in the right hand stage box was the glass-enclosed control room from which broadcasts are directed. News Commentator Edwin C. Hill ("The Human Side of the News") informed listeners-in throughout the U. S. what the audience already knew, that this was the first of a series of special CBS programs, which would be broadcast from the Playhouse. Tickets will be distributed free by CBS and the sponsors of its programs. Through the Playhouse CBS hopes to improve its broadcasts by keeping performers aware of an audience instead of a microphone. During the opening program entertainers whose chief experience has been in radio were so ill at ease in a theatre that galleryites could hardly hear them.

Not everyone was as pleased with the new Radio Playhouse as were CBS officials and their first night guests. Manhattan theatre folk regarded it as an invasion of their domain, denounced the policy of free admission as unfair competition. Indignant theatre managers named a committee to protest to the NRA.

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