Wireless Programmes
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Wireless Programmes is a handwritten essay by Delia submitted as a school exercise in English when she was 16.
It deplores the loss of quality in BBC Radio programming, due to a move from music to drama. This eerily foreshadows the way that her music was crushed and scorned at the drama-dominated BBC in later life.
The essay is dated 8th May 1953.
Transcript
8.V.'53 Wireless Programmes.
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Wireless programmes can be divided
into five groups:- religious services, variety,
music, talks and plays. When broadcasts
first began, the predominant feature appears
to have been music. Music in itself can
never have any bad effect on its listeners
and therefore the programmers then must
have been of a fairly high standard. It
was not until variety programmes were
introduced that this standard was lowered.
These programmes, such as "Kay's a Laugh,"
"Life with the Lyons," "Take it from Here,"
"The Goon Show," etc. require no concentration or
mental effort on the part of the listener.
An occasional one of these programmes may
have some real entertainment value, but
followed one by the other as they are early
on a Sunday evening, and repeated as also
many of them are, this value ceases to exist,
and they have no value whatsoever. This has
therefore resulted in lowering the general standard
of broadcast programmes until now it is
getting too low.
Many families with radios have them
turned on all the time which they are at
home, regardless of what is broadcast, though
generally preferring the lighter programmes, while
occupied in some other task. Therefore, if
the lightest programmes were gradually made
less light, the programmes would reach, in time,
the standard once maintained. The B.B.C. has
the responsibility of making sure that the leisure
----
which they give to so many people is of a
desirable standard; if they offer the public a lower
standard of programme, they expect, in time, these
programmes; this produces the bad effect of making
people's minds lazy.
