FROM THE ARCHIVES:The pitfalls of predicting the future of any technological development or, indeed, the future in general, are all too evident in this column by The Irish Times anonymous radio critic in 1946. – JOE JOYCE
THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the BBC will resume television broadcasts next month may have set owners of nearly obsolete wireless sets wondering if it is worthwhile replacing them now or should they wait for another 12 months or so, when all wireless sets will be television sets.
My own belief is that for several years television will be more of a hindrance than a help to broadcasting. It will divert enterprise, money and talent from ordinary broadcasting; it will receive far more publicity than it is worth; and it will offer in return a very limited range of entertainment, in which novelty will be the chief element.
Of course, this prophecy may be as hopelessly wrong as were the forecasts of the high-brow film critics when sound pictures were introduced in the 1920s.
In various high-class weekly and monthly journals at that time they proved to their obsequious followers, of whom I was one, that sound would only fetter the art of the cinema; that only a few stupid businessmen like Mr. Fox and Mr. Metro-Goldwyn could fail to see this, and that as soon as the novelty of their products had worn off these talking-picture pioneers would get the only lesson they could appreciate – a good, hard tumble on the Stock Exchange.
So it may be with television, but there are reasons for thinking otherwise.
Ordinary broadcasting, within its limits, gives us something that is as large as life, or even larger. Listening to a play or to a talk we can hear the speakers as plainly as if they were in the same room, and much more plainly than if we were listening to them from the dress-circle of a theatre. Moreover, the scene can move as rapidly and convincingly as do scenes in the cinema, and the illusion can be more effective.
For example, Dorothy Sayers's portrayal of the scenes on the road to Calvary in her radio-play, The Man Born To Be King, was more deeply moving than the same story could be made on a stage or in a film.
Would this or any other piece of effective radio drama have gained if it had been accompanied by small, blurry pictures of the scenes.
Or would the contrast between the fullness of the voices and the midget figures not be a constant obstacle to dramatic effect?
If we suppose that in a few years television will improve so as to provide fairly large and sharply defined pictures, then it will give good value in certain things. A televised account of a football match at Lansdowne road will be much better than the ordinary commentary, provided that enough cameras can be ranged round the pitch and that they can be efficiently directed. A travel talk may gain from being accompanied by pictures, not of the talker, but of the scenes of which he is talking.
On the other hand, it is very doubtful if Mr. Churchill’s famous radio speeches would have sounded any better if they had been accompanied by a picture, however large. Imagine his rich, sonorous voice declaiming: “Our qualities and deeds must burn and glow through the gloom of Europe until they become a veritable beacon of salvation.” What could television add to this?
Similarly with music. A televised picture of the London Symphony Orchestra would not enrich its interpretation of a Beethoven symphony, nor would a picture of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir make its harmonies more stirring. On the contrary, there is a big danger that such presentations would lose, because there is always something slightly ridiculous about pictures of people in large groups. The movies have had to face this problem in their so-called musical pictures, and they get round it by subordinating the music to a story of the conductor being in love with a young woman in the back row of the stalls, or some such device.
The televising of plays may make good home entertainment if the pictures are large and clearly defined. But the projection of large pictures possibly will mean that the receiving set will have to be moved out of the family living-room into a special television room.
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