AIR WAVES

20 years ago the youth of America found a new toy with which to annoy its elders they called it a radio and it gave forth a wide variety of squawks and howls and occasionally a faintly audible voice from a nuisance radio progress to become a novelty earphones gave way to loudspeakers and you could actually hear music by radio in your own living room [Music] in a few more years radio had become an important entertainment media sending the best talent into the whole [Music] another step forward and radio became an accepted vehicle for nationwide news and opinion as well as entertainment the depression has been passed and that prosperity is just around the corner there is every reason to believe that 1932 will be the best year that American business has experienced in a decade today radio knows no national limits and putt goes on in the world also goes on in every American living room where there is a radio receiver in the United States broadcasting is so well organized today that we take for granted everything that stands behind the radio receiver but actually radio broadcasting has made even greater strides in the past 20 years than reception radio studios have grown up too from the shed in Pittsburgh that housed the first studio to skyscrapers like New York's Radio City in which are located the world's largest radio studios these studios are open to the public and a steady stream of visitors files through the lobby to purchase tickets for a tour that demonstrates the technique of radio and shows the equipment and facilities essential to putting a modern program on the air but contrary to popular belief radio programs are not broadcast from the studio they are sent by wire to the transmitter station usually located outside the city where they are actually put on the air [Music] too many visitors the most interesting exhibit on the guided tour is the sound effects demonstration in which the guide explains how the sound effects heard on the air are me I'm gonna try and show you what some of those sound effects you hear looks like here we have the marching army wear frame was 25 was it a company attend gun company it is a all right now to feed this large army we use an ordinary piece of cellophane as prices bacon and egg or sausages but some french fried potatoes will go very nicely and now the milkman who delivers the milk to the boys in the army something like this we are warning and now the one-man cavalry here you have the army officer another heist part of the studio tour is a stop in the glass-enclosed observation gallery of a studio from which a program is going on the air or one in which a program is in the final stages of rehearsal from a soundproof balcony the visitor watches the program on the studio floor below and hears it from a loudspeaker overhead in this dress rehearsal the very duties of the announcer are probably the most interesting part of the program or he keeps it running smoothly as he follows his script a flashing light attracts his attention to the engineer who signals that the actors are too far away from the microphone he places them in the best positions for a good mic pick up and the rehearsal goes on the final rehearsal is conducted just as if the program were actually on the air the announcer checks the time to the second and as the program nears the end he signals the actors to go faster the change in pace is so slight that it is unnoticed by the audience but it is enough to bring the lagging script up to the Racing Club and the program ends on the north [Music] the program over the tool leaves the observation booth to see other interesting studio activities and to marvel at the master control board through which every program is clear to the transmitter but behind the equipment and activity scene on the tour is an even greater marvel of organization unseen by the visitor in the announcers room owners of well-known voices relax briefly between programs and rehearsals Milton Kraus plays Chinese checkers with Kelvin peach while Jack Costello times the script but relaxation is short-lived while putting a program on the air is a matter not of minutes or hours run up days and weeks of preparation days and weeks that are crammed with activity for scores of people [Music] twin gods of radio broadcasting are the clock and the conference for the first step in the creation of any important program is a conference of department heads a conference that takes place long before the date of the program [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] based on notes of the program outline made at the conference each department swings into action many artists and actors must be interviewed and the personnel of the program carefully selected while writers prepare the first draft of the script in another office the musical director measures melody in minutes slave to the inexorable stopwatch in the hand of the program director [Music] the work of artists writers and musicians must be coordinated and recorded for the information of the scores of people who are concerned with the program so from the mimeograph room though the thousands of printed sheets of paper containing the description and instructions for the program but before the ink is dry this stopwatch may call for changes the music library makes its preparations the printed score for each musicians part is assembled [Music] [Applause] as the day of the program approaches telegrams carried last-minute plans to out-of-town station and studio executives are kept in touch with developments by the interoffice tool autograph [Music] on the final day a dress rehearsal is called in the studio from which the program is to be sent musicians file in to find their music already laid out the stage is dressed for the broadcast and engineers place their microphones and check their equipment the musicians tune up and as the hands of the clock point to rehearsal time the conductor steps up to his platform to lead his men through their difficult art over and over again until they satisfy him and the ever-present stopwatch [Music] weeks of preparation days of rehearsal then a few minutes of broadcasting and on the split second switches are flipped on the master control board bytes blink and the program is finally on the air [Music] as we twist the familiar dials of our radio sets bringing music and comedy and drama into our homes as we listen to the man in the street and the man of the hour few of us stop to think how our lives have been revolutionized in two decades by voices from the star how much we depend on the magic of the airway [Music] [Applause] [Applause]