Modern Mind

subsequent years, a
New Yorker
reporter might spend five months on a single article: three months collecting information, a month writing and a month revising (ad this before the fact checkers were called in). ‘Everything from bank references to urinalysis was called for and the articles would run for pages.’ 46 The
New Yorker
developed a devoted following, its high point being reached immediately after World War II, when it sold nearly 400,000 copies weekly. In the early 1940s, no fewer than four comedies based on
New Yorker
articles were playing on Broadway: Mr
and Mrs North, Pal Joey, Life with Father
and
My Sister Eileen. 47
    The way radio developed in Britain reflected a real fear that it might have a bad influence on levels of information and taste, and there was a strong feeling, in the ‘establishment,’ that central guidance was needed. ‘Chaos in the ether’ was to be avoided at all costs. 48 To begin with, a few large companies were granted licences to broadcast experimentally. After that, a syndicate of firms which manufactured radio sets was founded, financed by the Post Office, which levied a 10-shilling (50 pence) fee payable by those who bought the sets. Adverts were dispensed with as ‘vulgar and intrusive.’ 49 This, the British Broadcasting Company, lasted for four years. After that, the Corporation came into being, granted a royal charter to protect it from political interference.
    In the early days the notion of the BBC as a public service was very uncertain. Ad manner of forces were against it. For a start, the country’s mood was volatile. Britain was still in financial straits, recovering from the war, and 1.5 million were unemployed. Lloyd George’s coalition government was far from popular, and these overall conditions led to the general strike of 1926, which itself imperilled the BBC. A second factor was the press, which viewedthe BBC as a threat, to such an extent that no news bulletins were allowed before 7:00 P.M. Third, no one had any idea what sort of material should be broadcast – audience research didn’t begin until 1936, and ‘listening in,’ as it was called, was believed by many to be a fad that would soon pass. 50 Then there was the character of the Corporation’s first director, a thirty-three-year-old Scottish engineer named John Reith. Reith, a high-minded Scottish Presbyterian, never doubted for a moment that radio should be far more than entertainment, that it should also educate and inform. As a result, the BBC gave its audience what Reith believed was needed rather than what the people wanted. Despite this high-handed and high-minded approach, the BBC proved popular. From a staff of 4 in the first year, it grew to employ 177 twelve months after that. In fact, the growth of radio actually outstripped that of television a generation or so later, as these figures show: 51

     
    To be set against this crude measure of popularity, there was a crop of worries about the intellectual damage radio might do. ‘Instead of solitary thought,’ said the headmaster of Rugby School, ‘people would listen in to what was said to millions of people, which could not be the best of things.’ 52 Another worry was that radio would make people ‘more passive,’ producing ‘all-alike girls.’ Still others feared radio would keep husbands at home, adversely affecting pub attendance. In 1925
Punch
magazine, referring to the new culture established by the BBC, labelled it as ‘middlebrow.’ 53
    Editorially speaking, the BBC’s first test arrived in 1926 with the onset of the General Strike. Most newspapers were included in the strike, so for a time the BBC was virtually the only source of news. Reith responded by ordering five bulletins a day instead of the usual one. The accepted view now is that Reith complied more or less with what the government asked, in particular putting an optimistic gloss on government policy and actions. In his official history of the BBC, Professor Asa Briggs gives this example of an item broadcast during the strike: ‘Anyone who is suffering from “strike depression” can do no better than to pay a visit to “RSVP” [a show] at the New Vaudeville Theatre.’ Not everyone thought that Reith was a stool pigeon, however. Winston Churchill, then chancellor of the exchequer, actually thought the BBC should be taken over. He saw it as a rival to his own
British Gazette,
edited from hisofficial address at 11 Downing Street. 54 Churchill failed,