B.B.C. NEWS-BULLETINS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
• was surprised to see the opinion of Janus that the recent B.B.C. news programmes were " incompetent performances," and I did not realize until then that what must be the great Weight of popular opinion on the side of the present programmes has a small but perhaps influential section of the public against it. I am prepared to bet Janus that any hundred average licence holders will endorse the new bulletins as against the old by a vote as large as that given in the Saar for Germany.
A few months ago the B.B.C. news was deathly dull. There was no life or movement in it. Such a place as the British Empire might never have existed. We heard only a short, stiff, scholastic statement : the veriest dry bones of the day's history. Now that history is presented with brains, and equipped with flesh and blood. The night of which Janus complains—last Thursday—we had a most striking commentary in the middle of the bulletin by Mr. Anthony Eden : it was vivid, lively, and of first-rate im- portance.
I have listened to American, French and Italian bulletins. Each have their points. I admit that the delivery of some of our announcers sounds tired and flat compared to the vital voices of the Latins, and the " pep " of the Americans; but the matter of our present news programmes is far superior in scope, range and variety to those given by the countries above-named. I should think it safe to say it was the best in the world.—I am, Sir, &c., F. YEATS-BROWN. 104a Gower Street, W.C.1.
[Janus writes : The evening to which I referred- was, as I stated, a Tuesday, not a Thursday. In any case, admirable as Mr. Eden was, I suggest that the right place for com- mentaries is at the end, not in the middle, so that listeners who want simply news can get it.]
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