UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
On Being Broadcast At
By JAMES M. MATTHEWS (Brasenose College, Oxford)
THE views of undergraduates were not invited for the Beveridge Report on the B.B.C. It hardly matters. The only subject on which undergraduates could be expected to comment with any authority would be the Third Programme, and I am not sure how many would be in a .position to do so. In the present Third Programme audience, now so small that Listener Research has no means of estimating it, the undergraduate is hardly ever to be found. He does not in general feel that any- thing emanating from the Third Programme much concerns him.
I should be hard put to prove this, but I am glad to say that it has been done for me by Mr. Peter Laslett, late of the B.B.C., who wrote on broadcasting and the universities in the B.B.C. Quarterly last year: " There is little sign of [undergraduates] developing that general all-round curiosity which should be stimulated . . . by the Third Programme." And later, lest the implied rebuke should not have sunk home, he summed up: "The general conclusion seems to be that the B.B.C. represents a stage of general intellectual development which has not yet made itself felt at the universities, or to which at any rate the universities have not yet made their response."
It is a pity that no one till now seems to have risen to this bait. After all, the B.B.C. does not often tell its audience what it thinks of it. I should like to celebrate the event by attempting to discuss the matter with an equal frankness ; though, as the subject is large, and I have less space than Mr. Laslett at my disposal, I may have to confine myself mostly to the one question of " response." The " response " of undergraduates to the Third Programme has a definite, if brief, history which I must recapitulate. For there was grandeur in the original conception of the Third Programme. It was going to give a chance, unprecedented in broadcasting and perhaps in history also, to the intellectuals, who would be able to command spontaneously a huge audience. The plan was almost Pericleati in its scope—simple, courageous, nobly civilised. It really seemed as though the Golden Age of broadcasting was about to begin ; " all-round curiosity," in a turbulent age, was to know the meaning of liberty.
After a period of early adjustment, closely watched by a large and eager audience, a moment of testing came. One of the scientific
scoops " of the century, huge in its implications, was to be pre- sented. It may be years before an opportunity in broadcasting arises comparable to that yielded by Fred Hoyle's series of lectures. Here was a chance for a unique series of follow-up broadcasts— talks, features, discussions—exploring in the wake of contemporary science. The universe and the imagination of man—are there any- %here two themes comparable in fascination and power ? The evlorable fund of ideas was unending, reaching back at least as far as the Renaissance, if not to the ancient Greeks—a wonderful blend of human history and the wildest romance, of ancient and mediaeval faith and modern superstition. There was not a funda- mental issue of life which was not touched at some point by the subject. The imaginative range could not have been more exciting. The chance was irrecoverable ; and it was missed by a million light years. What we got were eight wonderfully lucid lectures. And then . . . " Replies to Fred Hoyle " ; calculated essays in narrow disparagement, allegations faintly suggesting academic discredit, spoken in earnest and heard with shame, and some colourfully con- tra:d Christian paribles. Then tomb-like silence. What a feast for " all-round curiosity."
Hopes so betrayed do not quickly recover. No generation of listeners, least of all a young one, could be so naive as to lay itself open indefinitely to such frustration. Doubtless everyone decided to give the Programme " another chance." But, even so, the squandering of this classic opportunity made one realise, with a Chill of fear, that the sinister force responsible for this calamity matht in reality be, not a flash of tragic bad luck, but the policy
itself, the Periclean plan, in action ; that, in fact, little though we knew it, this was the Golden Age of broadcasting.
Mr. Laslett has a comment on this. " It," he says, " the Third Programme fails, it would be as much due to the fact that it has been too good for the people who should listen to it as it would to the policy of those who run it." But 1 think everyone has seen through the illusion now. That pedagogic attitude is a fatal admis- sion ; no university claims to be " too good " for its undergraduates. The one question from the start facing the Third Programme was whether it intended to gratify the intellectual curiosity and deter- mination it had obviously aroused ; whether, in other words, a policy could be contrived more adventurous and more ready to explore than university scholarship, but equally honest and equally deter- mined. The first essential, therefore, was to know where the curiosity lay, so that no time would be wasted warming up old controversies or exploring long-deserted avenues.
From this generation, at least, there was plenty of material to work on—primarily, I suppose, its suspicion of the intellectual predicaments of its immediate ancestors and its curiosity about inter- national affairs, so little examined ; or, more generally, its instinctive rejection of Cyril Connolly's phrase: " It is closing time in tho gardens of the West," and all the nineteenth century hang-over implied therein. There was, and is, enough solid opinion here to make it worth while launching a full-scale attack on present-day concepts of religion, politics, art and philosophy. No one's curiosity need have been doubted.
But the Third Programme, in the event, never got round to matching even the intellectual curiosity of its own older generations, let alone that of the present undergraduate generation. The eyes of intellectual inquiry were blinded from the start. The goal was not even envisaged. Instead, the same cautious diplomacy which marks all B.B.C. dealings, the same jockeying to meet accusations of bias from every side at once, the same quibbling caution which threw away Fred Hoyle's gift, were thought suflicient to meet the hopes of a large, anxious audience. Outside opinions—as violently different, no doubt, as those of the Disinterested Outsiders (General) in the Beveridge Report—were made the measure of what was re- quired. So, for example, the "Soviet view " was given a hearing, but presented with such unctuous superiority that no one could be deceived into thinking it really represented an insight into the character of Soviet life ; " liberty" was discussed, but with care that no challenging difficulties were exposed, despite Rex Warner's attempts to indicate them. In every field, indeed, a special technique has been evolved for conducting controversies not unlike a con- juring trick. At one moment a solid problem is going to be fought out and anything may happen. Then hey, presto! It turns out to be the same old sparring contest again—Christian versus not-so- Christian, idealist versus positivist—and the day is saved. Mr. Laslett pointed out in his article that the B.B.C. is " the great instrument of inquisition for the intellectuals." Galileo might have agreed.
The persuasive ambassadorship of its musical policy will surely give the Third Programme an eternally loyal following ; its factual programmes of scholarship are irreplaceable ; but few under- graduates will risk their souls at the "stage of general intellectual development " which the B.B.C., in spite of Mr. Laslett, still represents.
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