Study Period

As if in one great national seminar, everyone seemed to be "studying" radio last week:

P:The Office of Facts and Figures, while launching its own propaganda program, spurred on its researchers in a study of network broadcasting. Scope: OFF refused to say, except that it aimed to improve and "coordinate" programs of importance in national defense.

P:Musicritic Virgil Thomson found a scholarly volume of radio theses* which proved, among other things, that "radio builds up a pseudo interest in music," that "popular songs are not popular because people like them, but . . . have been imposed on public taste through the very nearly 100%-efficient plugging process."

P:Procter & Gamble, studying its soap opera commercials, wondered if more but shorter ones might create an illusion of less total commercial time.

P:The broadcasters themselves studied radio, admitted that something was wrong. One thing wrong: now that the burden of news broadcasts is so grave, their commercials are at best a distraction, at worst an insult to the listener. Last fortnight, at the instance of the Broadcasters' Victory Council, a committee of the National Association of Broadcasters recommended certain minimum rules for news program commercials. Among them:

1) If possible, let the commercial be delivered by a separate announcer.

2) Don't use news terms like "flash" or "good news" in advertising spiels.

3) Don't say, "This news has been brought to you by the courtesy of the Blank department store." (News is brought by news services, and no courtesy is involved. )

4) Don't preface news with long ballyhoo for the sponsor's product. (First things should come first.)

5) Don't interrupt a news story with a commercial. This has a "demoralizing effect.''

P:The U.S. public was also studying radio. War has sensitized many a normally numb ear to the profound difference between commentators like Mutual's Raymond Gram Swing, whose concern has been wholly with the news, and one like Mutual's $130,000-a-year Gabriel Heatter, whose soughing sanctimony and elephantine fight talk sound most appropriate when he urges the oily virtues of "my good friend, Kreml Shampoo."

Last week several important sponsors took a more adult tone in their messages. On CBS's evening news roundup, United Fruit went so far as to advise cabbage and spinach along with grapefruit and bananas for the balanced wartime diet. Curt and clearly patriotic was Gruen, which snapped: "Buy a Gruen watch, but buy a defense bond first."

* Radio Research 1941; by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank Stanton; Duell, Sloan & Pearce ($2.50).

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