SHOP TALK

Having received the benediction of Dean Chase and President Conant, the Radio Workshop is now well launched on its official career. In the last fifty years no Harvard extra-curricular project has given such promise of future significance; incorporating as it does some of the best brains--faculty and undergraduate--in the University's English, Music, Government and Physics departments, it presages an era of Harvard leadership in the development of radio technique which may well parallel the ascendancy of Professor George Baker's 47 Workshop in the field of the drama.

It is a universally deplored fact that although radio is fast approaching technical perfection, the level of material sent through this new medium is despicably low. Chiefly because of restrictions imposed by advertisers, radio to date has produced few programs of any cultural value whatsoever. To give the devil his due, classical music has never before been so widely disseminated, but in general, program directors seem to assume, a priori, that the average listener's intelligence is little above the ten-year age level. As a result instead of making even a feeble effort to improve the average mind, the guiding hands of radio chose long ago the path of least resistance--programs are brought down to the average level. This is the only rational explanation of the "Green Hornet" adventures, the comedians, and the "dramatic" sketches which currently clutter the air-waves.

Thus have the tremendous potentialities of radio, especially in the field of education, been generally ignored. Harvard's Radio Workshop with its student workers and faculty advisers will attempt to point the way to the correction of these ills. From every angle it will attack the problem of presentation of ideas through sound. To quote its Constitution: "The object is to study and perfect new techniques for radio in the writing and producing of plays, poetry, and fiction, and effective presentation of political and sociological subjects of a more general educational character, and in the composition of music as a part of dramatic presentation, and to provide close collaboration between the writers, composers, and radio technicians."

Students, working with faculty advisers will presumably accomplish these ends. Some will author scripts aided by members of the English Department, others will study microphone technique, the mysteries of auditory perspective, the effects of studio acoustics, and the reactions to propaganda. For the present, a majority of the programs will be recorded, although certain specific presentations will be heard over WIXAL. This is the group's avowed intent--to combine the theoretical with the practical. By coordinating the newer theories of auditory perception with actual practice, the Workshop may well take the helm in radio's future progress.