The B.B.C. is back at its old vice of holding
up. two- thirds or more of its news items while someone gives a five-minute talk that perhaps ten per cent. of listeners want to hear. Its procedure on the night of the first announcement of the typhoon disaster in Japan was a particularly flagrant case. This item came rightly first in the list. But immediately after it all the rest of the news—some of it very interesting and important—was held up while someone gave a talk, no doubt admirable in itself, about minor typhoons he had experienced in the past. To run that at the end of the news, when anyone could listen to it who wantedto, would have been . perfectly sound. To condemn listeners to submit to this kind of interpolation under pain of missing the resumption of the news is both stupid and irritating. * * * *
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