RADIO RE-EXAMINED
Landry, Robert J.
Radio Re-examined RADIO. TELEVISION AND SOCIETY, by Charles A. Siepmann. Oxford University Press. 410 pp. $4.75. Reviewed by Robert J. Landry AS LONG ago as 1940, which is another generation in...
...The book is closely reasoned and reasonably stated throughout...
...He had bargained for the narrow commercialism of the broadcasters and for the public's lazy acceptance of the table as spread, but he was not emotionally prepared for the run-outs and weaselings, the trimmings, timidities, and failures of the people's representatives...
...One senses the consequences of the earlier work in the modified rapture of the new book...
...It was deplorable that anything as important, socially, as radio was left to the rough justice of commercial popularity surveys alone...
...but his book is consistently stimulating to the mind, and he reminds all of us, usefully, that another medium of mass communication, TV, is upon us and that its patterns of development are being frozen right before our eyes with little or no protection of the public interest...
...But readers will not find here the same crusading zeal manifest in Siepmann's 1946 book, Radio's Second Chance...
...Come round now full circle to Siepmann's talents as a critic: he shines brightest in his chapters on British and Canadian radio, respectively...
...Stanton, CBS president, is first of all a Ph...
...Alas for criticism...
...D. and as such quail for a professor's gun...
...Some of Siepmann's chapters are hard going when he loses himself in abstract logic about education, free speech, and communication and forgets to provide the relief of example, incident, and anecdote...
...Reviewed by Robert J. Landry AS LONG ago as 1940, which is another generation in broadcast history, this reviewer expatiated wistfully in Princeton's Public Opinion Quarterly on "Wanted: Radio Critics...
...Siepmann is more than a little disenchanted...
...His highly readable prose, his richly cultured mind, his part-English, part-American background, and his 11 years in various positions with the British Broadcasting Corporation all add up...
...Given these values, plus his courage and indignation, which a good radio critic should possess next after critical intelligence, Siepmann would have been a match for John Crosby...
...Siepmann the professor turns out one book every four years, a book largely destined for the library shelves of others who like myself are students of the phenomenon...
...Add to this that Radio, Television and Society retails at $4.75 a copy ($3.50 to students) and there is an economic limitation upon Siepmann's impact which can only be deplored...
...Rather the FCC has been tired and dull and- slow-witted...
...Given a job of specifics to analyze, he is first-rate and his prose has tang...
...Stanton, says Siepmann, is guilty of "a disingenuous rationalization of the commercial broadcaster's natural preoccupation" with advertising circulation...
...But Siepmann still fights the good fight, albeit with bandages showing from the ferocious pummelings given him in 1946...
...The complaint of yesteryear will serve to frame a private regret about Charles Siepmann becoming a professor instead of a radio critic...
...His final section on television has something of the spirited mixture as before...
...So it was...
...A great social need was going unfilled...
...So it is...
...Siepmann would have flowered under the warm sun of a regular by-line...
...Siepmann charges full tilt at Frank Stanton's thesis that radio possesses all of the attributes that one may fairly ask of a mass medium...
...The Federal Communications Commission has proved less than the sword of chivalry...
Vol. 15 • February 1951 • No. 2
