How Long ?
I cannot help wondering how long this melancholy business is to continue. We all know the apology for the highly variable reception of the Third Programme—that there is a shortage of wave-lengths ; but, however good an apology is, it tends to lose force when repeated down the years. The question is: Does the Third Programme at the moment, in the general scheme of British broadcasting, repay (in the absence of a wider listening range) the time, money, and excellent talent spent on it ? (Those who can receive it will answer " Yes": those who can't, " No " ! On that reckoning, the Noes will surely have it.) It would be a thousand pities to lose it ; and I should myself be content, like Bcatrix Esmond, to " pray for happier days " ; but not too long. I don't accuse the B.B.C. of complacence about so important a matter, but I do feel that there is a tendency in Broadcasting House to look, so to speak, to plan rather than to performance, and to what goes out on the air rather than to what emerges from the set.
There was during the war, especially among the Americans, a very droll habit of pumping out short-wave radio propaganda. It looked very pretty on the paper schedule to have hours of talk in, say, Albanian. But how many of the sheep-coated Albanians had twelve-valve radio sets in their native fastnesses ?
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