Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker 1
Which was not originally a problem.
00:00:04 Speaker 1
But it’s a growing problem.
00:00:07 Speaker 1
Yet one time on the prairies, with 100 watts of power, you could cover virtually an entire province.
00:00:16 Speaker 1
I still have somewhere around the place, the advertising promotional material issued by what is now.
00:00:25 Speaker 1
CKK and Regina.
00:00:29 Speaker 1
At that time, the station operating on 500 watts of power had substantial audiences in northern Alberta, Vancouver, Winnipeg, parts of Ontario.
00:00:38 Speaker 1
And DX postcards from Australia and New Zealand.
00:00:42 Speaker 2
And amazingly, get it over through the mountains into into Vancouver would be the sky wave again.
00:00:47 Speaker 1
Yes, there there was no man made interference.
00:00:50 Speaker 1
In that day, CFCN siglin Calgary could be picked up clearly on Granville St.
00:00:55 Speaker 1
in Vancouver on a very poor receiver.
00:00:59 Speaker 2
Where most of the receivers were rather poor, as in today’s.
00:01:02 Speaker 1
Terms and yes, they were very poor.
00:01:05 Speaker 1
Today we have police, taxi, fire, radio, mobile citizens band electric blankets.
00:01:10 Speaker 1
Via Thermi machines, the man made interference is becoming appalling.
00:01:15 Speaker 1
In big cities, some of the police forces have to have two or three.
00:01:19 Speaker 1
Transmitters simply to cover their cars in a given setting, and their high-powered transmitter.
00:01:25 Speaker 2
They had some fun too, and they were collected back to 192627 when the.
00:01:32 Speaker 2
Secretary of Commerce at that time, Herbert Hoover, discovered that he had no power to force the station to stay on its frequency, and they simply began moving around at their own convenience, which inconvenienced us.
00:01:45 Speaker 1
And that was what led to the.
00:01:48 Speaker 1
The new international conferences, which culminated in Narba.
00:01:53 Speaker 1
The courts in the United States ruled.
00:01:56 Speaker 1
And that the United States government had no power.
00:01:59 Speaker 1
To compel a station to stay on a specific or given.
00:02:02 Speaker 2
Frequency trained stand.
00:02:04 Speaker 1
Yes, it was.
00:02:06 Speaker 1
The ruling went a little bit further really and seriously diluted the power of the government to close down a station.
00:02:14 Speaker 1
And what I didn’t say, so it practically implied that a license, once granted was a permanent.
00:02:20 Speaker 2
Affair and I think it said something to the effect that he really had no power to deny a license.
00:02:25 Speaker 1
That’s right, it did say.
00:02:26 Speaker 1
That then Hoover at that time the Secretary of Commerce.
00:02:32 Speaker 1
Took engineering advice.
00:02:35 Speaker 1
All of it bad, by the way.
00:02:36 Speaker 1
The best engineering brains of that day said.
00:02:40 Speaker 1
Total North American continent could never support more than 600 transmitters support and the technological sense that there was all the spectrum would bear.
00:02:49 Speaker 1
Of course, today the US alone has 2000 or more am stations, 900 television stations. God know some of the FM stations and citizens band, taxi, police, fire, radio, the whole.
00:03:01 Speaker 1
And then he passed the Communications Act.
00:03:05 Speaker 1
Thus legislatively defeating.
00:03:08 Speaker 1
The decision of the courts.
00:03:10 Speaker 1
But in the mean time, a number of US stations had occupied frequencies used by Canadian stations, increased their power and became necessary to enter into international negotiation to.
00:03:22 Speaker 1
Brings some order into the situation.
00:03:24 Speaker 2
Well, of course, the ability to accommodate that so many stations is due at least in part, to the directional antennas, which were not very common either in the early days we were pretty well nomini directional signal.
00:03:35 Speaker 1
That’s right, that kind of thing came later.
00:03:38 Speaker 1
You know.
00:03:38 Speaker 2
Ernie Swan claims you sort of had the idea.
00:03:41 Speaker 2
Now he read an article and then said, well, you know, why don’t when we put.
00:03:45 Speaker 2
Up two to tell.
00:03:46 Speaker 2
Yeah, hope the signals against each other.
00:03:48 Speaker 1
Probably right. Originally all the.
00:03:52 Speaker 1
The towers were omnidirectional.
00:03:55 Speaker 1
Now you’ve got as many as a 9 tower.
00:04:00 Speaker 1
You have to reset the thing every morning after a heavy dew, but they exist.
00:04:05 Speaker 2
Well, of course Canadian stations weren’t noted for sticking precisely the frequencies either, mainly because the transmitter of the oscillating.
00:04:15 Speaker 2
Yeah, the Crest apparatus, because we’re not precisely tuned.
00:04:18 Speaker 1
No, they weren’t precisely tuned.
00:04:20 Speaker 1
They weren’t all that good.
00:04:22 Speaker 1
And if you got a heavy rain or other abnormal circumstances, you were you were drifting all over the band.
00:04:28 Speaker 1
Even at the best of times.
00:04:30 Speaker 1
You got a great deal of interference.
00:04:33 Speaker 2
I’ve often heard it.
00:04:35 Speaker 2
Marveled at the tenacity of people, and in two ways, one in the early days in buying radios at all, because it wasn’t even listen to and what you could hear wasn’t very clear.
00:04:46 Speaker 2
And secondly, the amount of money that people apparently were willing to invest in a radio set in the depression.
00:04:53 Speaker 2
Because those radios were not cheap, but they weren’t. The six and seven dollar transistor job as you can buy today at at RadioShack or wherever.
00:05:02 Speaker 1
In total, there wasn’t that much money invested.
00:05:06 Speaker 1
A good many people in Ontario and Montreal bought sets in the prairies in the Atlantic area, they were mainly homemade.
00:05:16 Speaker 1
I don’t know what the percentage is, but it must have been very, very substantial percentage, certainly a clear majority.
00:05:24 Speaker 1
One started off with the crystal set, the Cats whisker and the Quaker Oats box.
00:05:30 Speaker 1
And Spence Coldwell, then working for the tea and company in Winnipeg, Cleverly devised some sets out of half a walnut shell.
00:05:39 Speaker 1
But even when you got a little further advanced and in those days, remember we had batteries, we hadn’t gotten to the Rogers Battery last sat, hence RB and the CFRB by the way.
00:05:51 Speaker 1
Most of them in the prairies were homemade.
00:05:54 Speaker 1
The people in the prairies and to a certain extent in the Atlantic area did not get into store, bought in sets until well after World War Two.
00:06:06 Speaker 1
He has laid his 1947 there were a good many homemade receivers in the prairies and the interior of BC.
00:06:13 Speaker 2
On building radios appears to have been the avocation of almost all young people on that day.
00:06:18 Speaker 2
And that’s how of course, how many broadcasters got into it.
00:06:21 Speaker 2
They filled around when they.
00:06:22 Speaker 1
Were kids virtually everybody created at least half a dozen.
00:06:25 Speaker 1
Crystal sets try to improve the power as you went along, yet of course radio reception had a a fantastic.
00:06:34 Speaker 1
Fascination for people because for the first time, it brought in the outside world.
00:06:41 Speaker 1
Now, in many cases of family, A had manufactured a fairly decent set.
00:06:48 Speaker 1
And remember that this is before the day of speakers.
00:06:50 Speaker 1
You could listen only on the earphones, so you had to pass the earphones around from one person to.
00:06:55 Speaker 1
Another or put.
00:06:56 Speaker 2
Been a big.
00:06:57 Speaker 1
Bowl, but yes, which occasionally happened.
00:07:00 Speaker 1
Now you would find families in in northern Alberta driving 50 miles.
00:07:06 Speaker 1
In 40 below weather.
00:07:08 Speaker 1
To visit with family A to get perhaps 3 or 4 minutes of reception from KSL in Salt Lake City or KOA Denver, they put in the best signals at the of the time.
00:07:22 Speaker 1
And the Mormon choir.
00:07:25 Speaker 1
From Salt Lake City was the most popular of all the features.
00:07:30 Speaker 1
Alberta is, in any event, the Bible Belt of Canada.
00:07:33 Speaker 1
But apart from that, the Mormon Choir was an excellent musical aggregation.
00:07:38 Speaker 1
But if you could pick up even 3 or 4 minutes of that, then another thing built up, which is a certain pride in reaching distant cities, which is how the deixar was born, your set could bring in Denver and you bragged about it.
00:07:51 Speaker 1
So I worked on my set till I could bring in Los Angeles.
00:07:54 Speaker 1
So I could out brag you.
00:07:57 Speaker 1
And the spectrum being totally uncluttered, it was not uncommon in northern Alberta to pick up Russia, Australia and New Zealand.
00:08:06 Speaker 1
All manner of places and you carefully noted the times.
00:08:11 Speaker 1
And the music and any other items that would give certain identification.
00:08:16 Speaker 1
And you wrote the station who sent you back?
00:08:19 Speaker 1
The DX postcard for verification and people collected these things the way they would collect rare coins today.
00:08:27 Speaker 2
It was a very fascinating era.
00:08:31 Speaker 1
Yes, and people.
00:08:33 Speaker 1
Had less in their lives, the lives were less clutter.
00:08:38 Speaker 1
That, as I said earlier, people would drive 50 miles through 40 below weather to hear the the Mormon choir.
00:08:45 Speaker 1
Today, when you have moon shots, people sitting in comfortable oil heated living rooms will phone up to complain that they’re missing the football game on television.
00:08:53 Speaker 2
You know, they they don’t like being deprived of that.
00:08:59 Speaker 2
You’ve been looking at broadcasting, been active in it for a good number of years, whether a nasty question to ask you out of the blue, but would you select three sort of major or could you select three sort of major?
00:09:12 Speaker 2
Highlights or turning points in the business over that period and say whether or not you think they were good.
00:09:16 Speaker 1
Or bad, I suppose the, well, the first major point would be the.
00:09:25 Speaker 1
The erection of commercial broadcast transmitters beginning with CFCF in Montreal.
00:09:31 Speaker 1
The second major turning point was probably the Eard Commission, which led to the intervention of the state.
00:09:39 Speaker 1
For the first time.
00:09:42 Speaker 1
I’m of mixed feelings on the net result of that particular intervention, the Aird Commission.
00:09:50 Speaker 1
Did several things that were wrong, but it was probably useful at that time to have a state presence.
00:09:57 Speaker 1
In broadcasting, to maintain what’s now referred to as the East West Axis.
00:10:03 Speaker 1
So that it certainly wasn’t all bad.
00:10:06 Speaker 2
Because the commercial people could not possibly have gone east and West to the extent that the CRBC did.
00:10:13 Speaker 1
No, there would have been ways of doing this.
00:10:17 Speaker 1
The government for many years subsidized the Canadian Press wire between Sudbury and Winnipeg.
00:10:24 Speaker 1
In order to ensure an East West access.
00:10:27 Speaker 1
They could have subsidized the landlines in which network programs were carried to assure the same thing in broadcasting that would have been one way of doing it.
00:10:36 Speaker 1
But there were other forces at work which, inevitably, particularly the Grahams Bryan plant.
00:10:43 Speaker 1
Army of phantoms.
00:10:45 Speaker 1
These two gentlemen were successful in representing themselves as the voice of the people, like the famous tailors of a small town in England.
00:10:53 Speaker 1
So we got pushed in that direction, but something had to be done.
00:10:58 Speaker 1
We may not have chosen the best vehicle, but.
00:11:02 Speaker 1
We wound up with a vehicle that that worked insofar as that particular objective is concerned.
00:11:09 Speaker 1
Probably the 2nd.
00:11:11 Speaker 1
Major point of departure was the introduction of television.
00:11:15 Speaker 1
Which changed radio from a theatrical.
00:11:19 Speaker 1
From a theater, not theatrical, a theater type structure into the informative ruling format of today.
00:11:29 Speaker 1
The next major point of departure was.
00:11:33 Speaker 1
The introduction of the separate regulatory body, beginning with the Board of Broadcast Governors in 1958.
00:11:39 Speaker 1
And of course, I think that that was.
00:11:43 Speaker 1
About 90% desirable and good.
00:11:48 Speaker 1
The next point after that was the introduction of cable, and I think the Government of Canada, the licensing authorities reacted to cable too late, far too late.
00:11:59 Speaker 1
They didn’t see the potential.
00:12:01 Speaker 1
The impact would have in Canadian broadcasting.
00:12:04 Speaker 1
They caved in to political pressure.
00:12:09 Speaker 1
Which was motivated by local pressure and I think the government has made some very bad decisions in that and at the present structure.
00:12:17 Speaker 1
Of cable in Canada may well threat.
00:12:21 Speaker 1
The idea of a dominant Canadian motif for theme in broadcasting, and indeed the whole.
00:12:28 Speaker 1
Structure of broadcasting as it exists.
00:12:31 Speaker 2
Now when you say they caved in and they made some bad decisions, I presumably referring primarily to the permission to microwave signals 2 points away from the.
00:12:40 Speaker 1
Board exactly.
00:12:41 Speaker 1
I think that was a very bad decision indeed.
00:12:44 Speaker 1
Cable, really.
00:12:46 Speaker 1
Was primarily designed.
00:12:48 Speaker 1
To overcome.
00:12:52 Speaker 1
Reception difficulties caused by high rise or low terrain.
00:12:57 Speaker 1
And I think in Canada, we should have so organized our affairs that was confined to that.
00:13:02 Speaker 1
Or, to put it another way, that the cable system should have been licensed to carry only Canadian signals.
00:13:10 Speaker 1
So that if you couldn’t get an on air television signal because of a nearby high rise building where you were in a bit of a valley and the signal swept over you, you could get your television reception.
00:13:21 Speaker 1
But I remain convinced that we should have confined the cable companies to the carriage of only Canadian signals and not permitted the import of US signals at all.
00:13:32 Speaker 1
If we had decided to permit that, it should have been on the one hot basis instead of permitting the the microwaving across hundreds of miles.
00:13:40 Speaker 1
Search of Guts, San Francisco and Los Angeles pouring into Edmonton by cable.
00:13:51 Speaker 2
And I wonder what we could have.
00:13:52 Speaker 2
I wonder if it would have worked on that on that basis.
00:13:57 Speaker 2
Would could we have done it really.
00:14:03 Speaker 1
It is difficult to say.
00:14:07 Speaker 1
Really it boils down to this.
00:14:09 Speaker 1
The fundamental question, the fundamental dichotomy we’re dealing with is one that’s bedeviled broadcasting ever since its inception.
00:14:17 Speaker 1
Those who are regulatory minded believe that Canadians should want only Canadian produced programs and listen to and watch only Canadian produced programs, or at least a substantial majority of them.
00:14:31 Speaker 1
The majority of Canadians clearly want US programs clearly.
00:14:36 Speaker 1
This is a phenomenon.
00:14:46 Speaker 2
You know you’re talking about the people who want us to watch only Canadian programs.
00:14:51 Speaker 1
Yes, much as it may offend the.
00:14:54 Speaker 1
The red blooded small liberal.
00:14:57 Speaker 1
There are national characteristics.
00:14:59 Speaker 1
I don’t think it’s any accident that England, for instance, has produced great literature and drama, but very little painting, music or sculpture.
00:15:07 Speaker 1
That opera is confined largely to Italy and Germany.
00:15:13 Speaker 1
The Americans have a great gift for producing entertainment.
00:15:16 Speaker 1
I’m not sure why it’s probably because of the amazing mixture.
00:15:21 Speaker 1
Of peoples and backgrounds in the.
00:15:23 Speaker 2
United States one different might also have to do with the frontier beginnings of the United States, where much in the same way canines that you had to make your own entertainment, you had to produce entertainment when somebody had something good, they took it around the country.
00:15:38 Speaker 1
It could well be, but whatever the reasons, the Americans have a gift for this.
00:15:42 Speaker 1
American programs are heard and seen in every country in the world by choice.
00:15:49 Speaker 1
I’m confident that bonanza, for instance, is running somewhere in the world at this time, in every known language.
00:15:56 Speaker 1
I do know that there are Swahili and Hindu Hindi versions of bonanza.
00:16:03 Speaker 1
The end Japanese and so on.
00:16:05 Speaker 1
Everybody in the world prefers American entertainment.
00:16:09 Speaker 1
Now the other people don’t have the same problem that we do.
00:16:12 Speaker 1
Their land mass is not contiguous to the United States, so the importation can be controlled.
00:16:18 Speaker 1
It cannot in Canada because the signals.
00:16:21 Speaker 1
Reach most Canadian homes. Roughly what 75% of our population with is within easy walking distance of the US border of 90% of Canadian homes can receive US signals off air, and there is no way of stopping.
00:16:39 Speaker 1
Short of a fantastically expensive copper curtain along the whole of the border now.
00:16:46 Speaker 1
That was where the problem begins, and it still there.
00:16:50 Speaker 1
So it brings up the question of to what degree and extent.
00:16:53 Speaker 1
Should a government or Parliament be responsive to people’s wants?
00:16:59 Speaker 1
One could say on the one hand, we are determined to build a distinctive Canadian idiom, regardless of whether the majority wants to go along with this or not.
00:17:10 Speaker 1
Or you can say, well, if the majority of people really want us signals via cable.
00:17:16 Speaker 1
We’ll have to give way.
00:17:18 Speaker 1
Now here is in so many other fuels governments have traditionally been inconsistent.
00:17:24 Speaker 1
Regardless of what one thinks of bilingualism, it’s pretty obvious that the majority of English speaking Canadians don’t want yet.
00:17:31 Speaker 1
But the present government has said we think that bilingualism is indispensable to the continued existence of Canada.
00:17:37 Speaker 1
So you’re going to.
00:17:38 Speaker 1
Have it and you, of course you’ll come to love it.
00:17:42 Speaker 1
On broadcasting, they have taken the reverse view.
00:17:46 Speaker 1
They have said that the right to be a distinctive Canadian idiom, and that broadcasting should be the chief means of creating and maintaining it.
00:17:53 Speaker 1
But whenever there is pressure from any small town for cable.
00:17:59 Speaker 1
The government has caved in and said, all right, you’re going to have US programs.
00:18:03 Speaker 1
And that, of course, fragments the audience and makes it much more difficult to realize the dream of a Canadian broadcasting it again.
00:18:10 Speaker 2
And as you as you see, that would have been prevented or at least curtailed to some extent if the cable systems had never been allowed to import American.
00:18:17 Speaker 1
Signals exactly, and the government could have taken that stand.
00:18:21 Speaker 2
What about this business?
00:18:22 Speaker 2
Now we’re running into in Toronto on particular.
00:18:25 Speaker 2
Well, it will be all over the SRTC has its way.
00:18:28 Speaker 2
But as businesses stripping ads from American signals, is this fair ball?
00:18:35 Speaker 1
I have some doubts about it.
00:18:37 Speaker 1
I am in sympathy with the objective.
00:18:39 Speaker 1
I understand what this year TC is trying to do, but it strikes me as a rather grubby way of achieving an objective.
00:18:49 Speaker 1
I feel a certain uneasiness about piracy.
00:18:53 Speaker 1
No matter how desirable the end result may be.
00:18:57 Speaker 2
It isn’t it, isn’t it?
00:18:58 Speaker 2
Just as much piracy to take the whole program as is.
00:19:01 Speaker 2
Take part of.
00:19:03 Speaker 1
It is really.
00:19:04 Speaker 1
But having taken the program off the air in the first instance, frequently without permission, nearly always without permission.
00:19:13 Speaker 1
I think perhaps it would be the course of grace to leave it unmutilated.
00:19:19 Speaker 2
One, of course, is the argument of the American Broadcasting with what they’re really arguing for.
00:19:24 Speaker 2
However, continuation of the Canadian advertising they’re getting.
00:19:29 Speaker 1
Incidentally, I think we’ve probably overstated our keys a little on on this side of the border.
00:19:35 Speaker 1
I personally remain unconvinced that that much money is being drained into the United States.
00:19:43 Speaker 1
Particularly in the day of multinational corporations, if we have an ad in Buffalo, say, for Coca-Cola.
00:19:51 Speaker 1
Who can tell whether the ad is designed to maintain Koch share of the market in Buffalo or Koch share of the market in?
00:19:58 Speaker 2
Toronto, we would, I think the concern is in some instances, at least by the local or by the private, by the local TV stations as it’s not just Coca-Cola, it’s been the tailor down the street.
00:20:12 Speaker 2
What have you that is going over there because you’re being advertising in some instances being dumped at a very cheap rate.
00:20:19 Speaker 1
Or this is the only reason.
00:20:21 Speaker 1
The only reason that the local people take it up?
00:20:24 Speaker 1
But again, the argument in my mind at least, is the brings up certain doubts a good many of the local people who are using US stations and feeding the ads back on cable, or people who couldn’t afford the local television station.
00:20:39 Speaker 2
Or can’t buy time because they sold out.
00:20:41 Speaker 1
In the times that they want, at least, you could probably always buy time at 7:00 o’clock in the morning.
00:20:47 Speaker 1
I know that in Ottawa, the people who were advertising on the Watertown station and getting the ads fed back on the cable are all very small outfits, except the Government of Canada.
00:20:58 Speaker 1
Which uses Watertown pretty extensively, and there’s a weird combination for you, but it would cost what? 3-4 or $500.00 for a one minute spot on one of the local television stations, and they can get it for five or $10 in Watertown. Now, they simply couldn’t afford local television.
00:21:18 Speaker 2
So they aren’t likely to become Canadian advertisers, even if they.
00:21:21 Speaker 1
In any event, they might buy radio or newspaper.
00:21:25 Speaker 1
And if anybody has a case in this connection, I think it’s radio stations and the and the dailies.
00:21:30 Speaker 2
Well, even many, if not all of your local radio stations don’t have all that much desirable times.
00:21:35 Speaker 1
So yeah, this is true, and even the radio stations are more expensive than than cable.
00:21:41 Speaker 1
It’s a very difficult situation and I would feel better.
00:21:45 Speaker 1
If there were some way of solving it that weren’t quite as grubby as this commercial deletion policy.
00:21:54 Speaker 2
It was.
00:21:58 Speaker 2
He was saying that the television had destroyed radio as a theater or a theatrical outlet.
00:22:04 Speaker 2
That is entertainment.
00:22:05 Speaker 2
Variety shows dramas, concerts or the new FM regulations.
00:22:10 Speaker 2
I want to have take this word new out of all these tapes.
00:22:12 Speaker 2
I keep calling them new because they are now.
00:22:14 Speaker 2
They might not be.
00:22:15 Speaker 2
Are they going to go any way towards?
00:22:18 Speaker 2
Restoring it?
00:22:19 Speaker 2
Perhaps that is, are we going to see more drama, or perhaps even some variety shows, or or some concerts coming back on FM because of the requirement for foreground?
00:22:29 Speaker 1
Programming. I think that’s the CRT’s intent. I doubt very much that it will work in practice.
00:22:36 Speaker 1
Because people’s tastes and habits have changed so much.
00:22:42 Speaker 1
Very few people today want to sit in their in their own living room and listen.
00:22:48 Speaker 1
To say an hour of drama, who to bring back the LUX Radio Theatre is one example is probably a dream of nostalgic nonsense.
00:22:58 Speaker 1
If people are prepared for an hours drama in their living rooms, it will be by television.
00:23:04 Speaker 2
What about the idea of putting this in the drive time?
00:23:07 Speaker 2
As an entertainment for all the hundreds of thousands of people who who are caught in traffic jams going to or from work when they do, you think they could be interested in?
00:23:16 Speaker 2
I’m not so suggesting an hour, maybe 15 minutes, 1/2 hour.
00:23:20 Speaker 1
Here I have to guess, but I think that most of them really are interested in road and weather conditions.
00:23:26 Speaker 1
Continuous stream of information.
00:23:30 Speaker 2
Rather than the entertainment.
00:23:33 Speaker 2
Could be it’s always been whether fond hope of mind somewhere or whether somebody will bring back, bring back somebody.
00:23:41 Speaker 1
I wonder if this indicates that we’re getting over 21, yes.
00:23:48 Speaker 2
But there’s also, to my mind, some evidence.
00:23:50 Speaker 2
And guess what?
00:23:51 Speaker 2
It’s more of a gut reaction, and it’s in this stuff, but it some.
00:23:55 Speaker 2
Small indication of at least a leveling of the television audience.
00:24:00 Speaker 2
Then maybe television, because of its expanse, because of its voraciousness and appetite, because of all sorts of reasons, may have piqued as far as audience interest goes, and perhaps much less expensive.
00:24:18 Speaker 2
Perhaps somewhere there’s a station that can find the handle on this kind of thing.
00:24:22 Speaker 2
Obviously you’re not going to bring back your evening program and you just can’t do that on radio, but to find some way.
00:24:29 Speaker 2
We were you.
00:24:29 Speaker 1
Rather, I rather like the possibility you’re suggesting of a new technique.
00:24:33 Speaker 1
This perhaps is the way it could be done.
00:24:36 Speaker 1
A totally new as yet unknown technique.
00:24:40 Speaker 1
If it’s to be done, I suspect that’s probably the way it will come.
00:24:45 Speaker 1
It will have to be.
00:24:47 Speaker 1
I am told, that in certain parts of the world there is no use sending the cereal grains because the the stomach of the people can’t absorb them.
00:24:55 Speaker 1
Quite literally, they’re accustomed to other food when they eat cereal grains, they get stomach aches or throw up.
00:25:02 Speaker 1
Now I think you get the same kind of thing in cultural diets.
00:25:08 Speaker 1
There’s a great outcry now because it is alleged that a number of high school and even university students can’t read it, or at least read properly.
00:25:16 Speaker 1
It may or may not be true.
00:25:18 Speaker 1
I wonder if the reason that they don’t like reading books and do not in fact read many books has anything to do with the the training techniques in the high schools.
00:25:29 Speaker 1
Whether it has to do with the kind of society we now have.
00:25:33 Speaker 1
Where all of a sudden you’re confirmed with a book, it’s 200 to 250 pages and it’s just the bulk of the book that puts them off.
00:25:43 Speaker 2
Well, all those funny little hint.
00:25:44 Speaker 1
Tracks, you know, it’s perhaps these people would read tabloids or cartoons, something of that kind.
00:25:53 Speaker 1
In fact, I don’t think that we’ve made sufficient use of the cartoon technique in conveying information.
00:26:00 Speaker 1
No, in radio I think we’re up against the same thing.
00:26:04 Speaker 1
We may indeed be getting into this into television that perhaps.
00:26:08 Speaker 1
People will not accept the one hour show in television at the rate at which they used to, if at all.
00:26:15 Speaker 1
But yes, we could get back to grandma or Symphony, or the equivalent if we found a new technique where the light technique you you don’t have to say to yourself, well, OK, I’m going to have to sit down for an hour and concentrate on this.
00:26:28 Speaker 1
I think the under 40 age group has completely lost the power of concentration.
00:26:34 Speaker 1
When confronted with the with planning for it.
00:26:39 Speaker 1
They can concentrate, but don’t tell them in advance that they’re gonna have to sit down for an hour.
00:26:43 Speaker 1
Simply will not do it, and the point is to sneak up.
00:26:46 Speaker 2
On them get their attention exactly.
00:26:50 Speaker 2
Now there’s another area you mentioned it briefly and one station I know of in Ann Arbor, the universe down in Ann Arbor in Eastland.
00:26:57 Speaker 2
And did it there, the university FM station.
00:27:00 Speaker 2
They actually read a chapter of a book, read a regular time.
00:27:05 Speaker 2
Sometimes they found a fascinating was a very interesting 15 minutes or whatever it was.
00:27:10 Speaker 2
And there’s something else we’ve totally lost in this generation is the ability to be loud.
00:27:16 Speaker 2
Oh, yes.
00:27:16 Speaker 2
Boy, does this show up in our school.
00:27:18 Speaker 2
And we take put the kids in front of the microphone.
00:27:20 Speaker 2
Yes, particularly with the boys and the girls who simply isn’t really generally speaking.
00:27:27 Speaker 2
At least as raw material are far better than the meals, and I wonder if that has to do with their babysitting days, in which they read fairy tales to the.
00:27:35 Speaker 1
Kids, and I think that’s a likely guess like I think that in all communication forms.
00:27:44 Speaker 1
We need and need badly, a new breakthrough.
00:27:49 Speaker 1
To to adapt to changing times and to change to people.
00:27:55 Speaker 1
Oh, it’s not only a question.
00:27:57 Speaker 1
In my experience of younger people not liking to read and being unable to read in the sense that yes, they can read, but it bores them.
00:28:04 Speaker 1
They don’t want to sit down with a book.
00:28:05 Speaker 1
They’re too restless.
00:28:06 Speaker 1
Apart from anything else.
00:28:08 Speaker 2
No, no, I don’t want to knock up.
00:28:12 Speaker 2
I just want to knock out my pipe and just figure.
00:28:14 Speaker 2
I have the extra the.
00:28:18 Speaker 1
Also, they can’t verbalize.
00:28:22 Speaker 1
In two senses of that word, they cannot frame a cogent or coherent sentence.