USA > New York > New York City > New York panorama : a comprehensive view of the metropolis > Part 31
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Of the dozen or so other stations in the city-all of them small, un- filiated with networks, and intended for local service only-the reputa- ons of three in particular, because of the unusual type of service they nder, have spread beyond the metropolitan boundaries. These are QXR, WNYC, and WEVD.
WQXR is the first of the country's so-called "high-fidelity" stations. ; channel in the radio spectrum occupies 20 kilocycles instead of the
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usual ten-an advantage which makes possible the faithful transmissio of music, so that this station is noted for the quality of the classical musi I it specializes in broadcasting.
WNYC, "New York's Own Station," is owned and operated by thule city, and for that reason belongs to the limited category of broadcasdor stations that are non-commercial and accept no advertising. It has beenis of civic value in publicizing announcements, programs and advice fror Ind the police, fire, health, sanitation and educational departments of theft city. Although it lacks funds to attract high-priced performers, it is on -0 of New York's most popular stations because of the high quality of itper musical programs, its lectures in a variety of fields by college instructor:an and its experiments in radio school-room educational programs. Its transit mitter, with a power of 1,000 watts, is in the Greenpoint section ofo Brooklyn. hd
Station WEVD, founded in 1927 as a memorial to the Socialist leaderto Eugene V. Debs, occupies a position unique among the city's station :!! It is identified with the slogan "Voice of Labor," and serves as a char. fin nel for full discussion of labor problems. It accepts no compensatio kIS for time on the air taken by political discussion; it invites leaders in a the phases of labor, politics, education and economics to use its facilities ?a and it claims to broadcast a wider educational program than any othe comparable station. Station WEVD has produced one of its most porsi ular programs in its "University of the Air," under the direction ofee Hendrik Willem van Loon, noted historian, author and artist. A distinti guished volunteer faculty conducts four nightly periods a week. The sucey. cess of the "University" has been such that transcriptions of its course or in philosophy, psychology, art, history, labor, economics, literature anh drama have had a country-wide distribution to other radio stations oft a non-profit basis. Oswald Garrison Villard, Heywood Broun and Noise man Thomas, along with other nationally known persons, are associated in the administration of WEVD.
Station WBNX, sometimes called "The Voice of the Bronx," is typicalu of the several smaller stations of the city that make a special appeal tive the polyglot section of New York's population by means of foreign lar. guage broadcasts. These stations find audiences large enough in almo:) any nationality group to make their entertainment commercially wort Ta while. WBNX has gone further into a systematic nationality approach than any other New York broadcaster. Nearly one-fourth of its program? combine both racial and language appeals, and include Italian, Irisłu
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ionwish, Negro, Polish, Spanish, Hungarian, Ukrainian and Greek periods. Through the local outlets of the big chains New Yorkers hear the same lio programs that reach the smallest hamlet of the country. But in the quality of these programs, even more than in their variety, New ark has made its most important contribution to broadcasting. It has .sed the level of the musical taste of the nation, for here originated, d originate, the great opera and symphony broadcasts. To the excellence thl the music selected, New York adds what no other city in the country on or even the world-can add: the excellence of presentation. Great Heras are presented in their entirety by the Metropolitan Opera Com- orny; great symphonies are played by the world's finest orchestras, led the world's greatest conductors. The audience of these broadcasts has own to an incalculable size. Likewise in drama, the plays of Shakespeare d Ibsen, as well as of numerous later dramatists, have been pre- dernted by many of America's best known actors and actresses. In politi- education, Town Hall forums, held in New York weekly during the anter months, have revived a democratic institution that in similar form idists now in other communities. The New York forum, however, has e advantage that its platform attracts the outstanding political and social iesanders of America.
A phase of broadcasting most important to the buyer of radio adver- 0 ing is the time-of-day placement of programs, and of the day of the ek as well. The value of the period from Monday to Friday is fairly tiriform, as a whole, the important distinction lying in the hours of each uy. Saturday and Sunday have special values, and are considered good E some programs and less good for others. The summer months give expectancy of fewer listeners than the winter months; but the great- difference appears in the values before and after 6:30 P.M. Adver- ers usually deem the early evening hours the most valuable, and pay uble for the privilege of using them. To the advertiser, the cost of onsored programs, from morning to night, may run as low as $50 an ur on a small station to $15,000 an hour on a nation-wide broadcast er a major network.
Radio stations, advertisers, and advertising agencies find it imperative ascertain the comparative popularity of various types of radio pro- Jams. Acting for an association of advertisers, a New York statistical m through branches in 33 cities annually makes 400,000 telephone calls determine what radio-set owners are listening to. The highest rating istfiring the latter part of 1937 was accorded to "Charlie McCarthy,"
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the ventriloquist's dummy, whose Aristophanic remarks and opinions ha earned deferential comment even in the dignified editorial pages of 115 New York Times.
A universal program feature worthy of special comment is the "nel flash." It was made possible by the establishment in 1934 of two species ized radio news services, the Press Radio Bureau and the Transradio Net Service. Press Radio presents Associated Press news through the netwo(00 of both the National Broadcasting Company and the Columbia Broadca ing System in two five-minute broadcasts each day, as well as supplemp tary flashes on occasions of special importance. The Mutual Broadcasti System, represented by station WOR in New York, is provided wth United Press news flashes by Transradio. Press Radio has 12,000 miles leased teletype wires in the United States, and serves some 300 radio s. tions and 40 newspapers. It does not operate a radio station itself, 140 daily transmits through the short wave radio transmitter of Press Wirele! Inc., at Little Neck, Long Island, to isolated points in this country a abroad where the teletype service is not available. Press Radio evolve from the discontinuance of a similar service by the National Broadcasti 0 Company, under pressure applied by the powerful American Newspat Publishers' Association. The employees who had been conducting the ne services of NBC promoted Press Radio, which was an instant success af compelled other news services and newspaper rivals of radio stations flash news by radio, in modification of the newspaper publishers' origin ban. ESS
A promising new trend in program content has been brought abc by the work of two Works Progress Administration units: WPA Rad organized in April 1937, and the Federal Theater Radio Division, ganized in March of that year. The Federal Theater Radio Division ga Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neill to its listeners a year before their pla were featured by the major networks. Its program series included educational innovation, a dramatization of James Truslow Adams' Ej bu of America, sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary. Through tft New York City Board of Education and station WNYC, this featt was rebroadcast to 49 high schools in New York City, reaching a million and a half students (1937-38).
Witnessing a broadcast is one of the keenest delights of the radio fa ith and this fact has been utilized by New York stations to bring the pub. 00 to the threshold of the microphone. Those who will take the trout de to arrange for passes from one to three weeks in advance have the choi
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hat more than a score of broadcasts weekly. Most stations welcome visit- to the limit of their capacity, but the very small stations do not en- rage them. The Columbia Broadcasting System maintains four "studio ne ecil Ne aters" in New York, in addition to 15 other studios on company prem- s or leased property; the Mutual Broadcasting System, one. Activities the National Broadcasting Company are confined to Radio City in ckefeller Center. There, under one roof, is housed one of the most dcalborate radio organizations in the world. Of its more than 40 studios, e is a guest theater.
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No discussion of New York's radio facilities would be complete with- w: mention of broadcasting's quiet step-sisters-the governmental and es ergency services. In the Greater New York area, four direction-finder tions and ten radio beacons, all using telegraphic code, are scattered ng the coast to guide ships in and out of New York harbor. Five code ele tions broadcast weather warnings to ships at sea. Now that the range radio receivers has been extended to include the short-wave bands, average listener can hear the clipped, monotonous voice of New pork's police radio stations. Three such transmitters flash orders to the par ne jing radio-equipped police cars-WPEE, WPEF and WPEG. Station PY keeps in contact with the police boats in the harbor. The fire de- rtment maintains a similar station, of 500 watts power, to keep in ich with the harbor fireboats. And New York's radio amateurs main- ns 20 n more than 2,000 private radio transmitting stations that chatter end- sly with amateurs in the rest of the country and in almost every foreign tion of the globe.
Television, though still within the realm of experiment, antedates suc- sful voice-broadcasting radio. As far back as 1842, more than 60 years fore the Fessenden broadcast, a Scotsman, Alexander Bain, devised e first known apparatus for the electrical transmission of visual images a distance. A more efficient device serving the same purpose was pro- ced independently in 1847 by an Englishman, F. C. Bakewell. In the ter's machine, the picture to be sent was drawn on electrically con- ctive paper with an insulating ink; the paper was placed on a rotating um, and a metal stylus in contact with this drum was connected by wire the receiver, where the pressure of an inked brush poised against an- her rotating drum was controlled by an electromagnet. As the stylus oved over the picture at the transmitting end, the inked brush traced an entical path on a blank piece of paper in the receiver. When the stylus uched a dark area, the brush pressed down hard; when the stylus touched
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a white area, the brush lifted itself off the paper-and in fifteen mint or so the original picture in the transmitter was reproduced in facsimile the receiver. The most modern television equipment is precisely analog in its method of operation. For the stylus it substitutes a swiftly mov finger of light, for the inked brush a cathode-ray pencil in the recei that "paints" an immediately visible image on a fluorescent screen ; place of the inter-connecting wire it uses an ultra-short-wave radio circ -and in order to produce the illusion of moving pictures, it works seve hundred thousand times as fast, sending and receiving some 30 or 40 } tures a second instead of one every fifteen minutes.
In 1884, the so-called scanning disc used in television transmiss. today was invented by Paul Nipkow, a young German; not for so inc sequential a use as television, but in connection with his amazing "el trical telescope," a device intended ultimately to be used in astronomi observation for the purpose of magnifying distant stars and planets el trically instead of optically-and a possibility still far beyond the rea of present day television. In 1890 an American, N. S. Amstutz, succe fully transmitted a photographic half-tone over a twenty-five-mile w line. At about the same time the photoelectric cell was invented; and 1895 another American experimenter, C. Francis Jenkins, who has work on television ever since, conceived on paper the idea of substituti "wireless" for wire line circuits and sending motion pictures by rad By that time television had gone so far that it had to stand still and w for radio to catch up with it.
It was not until 1923, when Jenkins successfully transmitted a portr of President Harding from Washington to Philadelphia, that televisi as such took its next important step forward. Meanwhile engineers h been working behind closed doors. In 1927 the Bell Telephone Labo. tories sent television pictures from New York to Washington; in 19 the first television drama was broadcast by the General Electric Compa from Schenectady; in the same year a special television broadcast frc England was received by R. M. Hart at Station W2CVJ in Hartsda New York; and in 1929 Dr. Vladimir Zworykin announced his ne "kinescope," or cathode-ray television tube. In 1931 Jenkins opened t. first television station in New York, station W2XCR, broadcasting te. vision programs on regular schedule. It was quickly followed by sever others: stations W2XBS, W2XBO, W2XAB, W2XF and W2XR; ai New York became the center of a television boom that lasted until 193 Thousands of television outfits were constructed by amateurs, manufa
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ed receivers were offered for sale in the department stores, and tele- ion "fan" magazines appeared on the news stands. But the boom was mature and proved to be something of a fiasco. The stamp-size pictures re very poor in quality, New York's regularly broadcasting television tions disappeared, and television retired again behind closed doors. ere it now remains, issuing reports from time to time of brighter and ger images, of television in natural colors, of stereoscopic television in ee dimensions-but still awaiting the day when it can emerge as a nmercially practicable reality.
As the connecting link between radio and the talking movies, televi- n opens up a host of possibilities, with innumerable psychological, cial and political as well as technical implications. With its coming, ere is the certainty that radio's influence will be woven even more deeply o the pattern of American life.
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XV. THE PRESS
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ON NOVEMBER 8, 1725, William Bradford put forth the initial issue his New-York Gazette, the first newspaper to be established in the color ict In the more than two centuries since that event, journalism in New Yc City has had a notable and colorful history. To recount that history ev in broad outline is a task that cannot be attempted in such a book as th What follows here is no more than a brief record of the city's present-d facilities for the gathering and presentation of news, with some notes the evolution and character of those facilities.
Eight major dailies harvest the current crop of news events for metr politan readers. The Times, generally considered the best all-around new paper of the lot, has been characterized as "the newspaperman's new paper." This is a distinction previously held by the Sun, in the heyday Richard Harding Davis, Frank Ward O'Malley, Will Irwin and the res and by the old World, when it boasted a staff of such brilliant speci writers as Walter Lippmann, Laurence Stallings, Alexander Woollco Franklin P. Adams, and Heywood Broun, and a crew of star reporte under Frank Cobb, Herbert Bayard Swope, James W. Barrett and oth city editors.
The encyclopedic Times acquired its formidable reputation, under ti late Adolph S. Ochs, a Chattanooga publisher who took it over in 18. and who was responsible for the policy that established it in the front rat of newspapers. From that time on-and especially since the World Wa when public interest in European affairs reached a new high-the Tim has steadily increased its foreign news-gathering facilities. Now it exce all other American papers in the amount and quality of its foreign nev coverage. It has also been in the forefront in the general tendency towar specialized reporting. At home and abroad it employs a distinguished sta of reporters, some of whom have achieved spectacular feats.
In the days of its founder, Henry J. Raymond, the Times displayed notable zeal for political reform. Its most glorious successes in the role ‹
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sader were scored in 1857, when a Washington correspondent's ex- jure of the Land Grab Deal resulted in the expulsion of four members m the House of Representatives, and in 1871, when it helped to bring Tweed Ring to book. Under the guidance of Adolph S. Ochs and (thur Hays Sulzberger, Ochs' son-in-law and successor, it has striven to ke its appeal, qua newspaper, nationwide. That it has succeeded in be- ning America's foremost newspaper not even its severest critics will ny.
The Times' most formidable New York rival in the dissemination of ws is the Herald Tribune, which leads it in popularity in the wealthier tions of the city and suburbs. The Herald Tribune is notable especially the crisp contemporaneity of its local coverage, in which respect it is isidered in some quarters the superior of the Times; while its editorial ge is much livelier than that of its foremost rival. It resulted from the rger in 1924 of two of New York's oldest newspapers. In 1872, White- y Reid, members of whose family are the Herald Tribune's present pro- etors, bought the Tribune equity from its owner-editor, Horace Greeley, e of the first in the long line of great American editors. Greeley cher- ed high political ambitions, so high that certain contemporaries charged it he was suffering from messianic delusions (an affliction attributed editors and publishers to this day). A master in the art of political tribe, he enjoyed, through the paper he had founded in 1841, a power d prestige that lasted until his death in 1872.
The Reid family acquired the Herald in 1924 from Frank Munsey, who ır years earlier had bought it from the estate of James Gordon Ben- tt, the son of that paper's eminent founder. The elder Bennett was one the earliest pioneers in the field of sensational journalism, author of e remark that a newspaper's function was not to instruct but to startle. odern reporting owes much to both Bennetts for their conception of what Institutes news. Stories other papers would not touch-scandals, chancy s of gossip, neighborhood trivia-were all printed in the Herald, side side with news of national interest. This paper, founded in 1835, was e first to report events in the realms of Wall Street, society, sports and e weather.
But the last straw for the contemporary London Daily News was the erald's inauguration of the interview. The News commented severely on at "portion of the daily newspapers in New York" which was "bring- g the profession into contempt so far as they can by a kind of toadyism flunkeyism which they call 'interviewing'." Bennett would stop at noth -.
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ing to get the news-even if he had to make it himself, which he ‹is often enough-or to scoop a rival for circulation purposes. It is said tlal he spent a half million dollars reporting the Civil War and considered lern well worth the price. The younger Bennett, carrying on the family tra od tion from 1866, sent Stanley out to Africa to find Livingstone, exclusiv fos for the Herald.
let By the 1890's the Bennetts had come to be regarded as conservative fluences in comparison with the current crop of sensationalists who woli frantically stirring up the journalistic waters around New York in qu A of higher circulation. Chief among these was Joseph Pulitzer, who hay acquired the World in 1883 in an effort to duplicate his St. Louis suas cesses in New York. Pulitzer outdid Bennett in sensational circulati (aat schemes intended to attract the barely literate masses of New York. Apple priately enough, the term "yellow journalism" originated in the office five the World, when a Pulitzer cartoonist in an idle moment created tire famous "Yellow Kid" cartoon character.
When Pulitzer died in 1911, he left to his three sons an immensely step cessful paper, the name of which was everywhere synonymous with midad tant and courageous liberalism. Twenty years later, on February 27, 1921gr New York was reading the story of "The End of the World." The jor nal's death was mourned by the entire newspaper profession, especia pr those members who still regard the old World as their real Alma Matias
The Scripps-Howard interests acquired the assets of the World afth its demise, and Roy Howard combined it with the Telegram to form tis present World-Telegram. Though this paper boasts of progressive tenm encies, it is indefinite in character and not too firm in its convictions. Sta ley Walker in City Editor characterizes the World-Telegram as "alive its news, but skimpy and shot through with dubious semi-crusades." We chief distinction is its battery of distinguished columnists, including Me Franklin D. Roosevelt, Heywood Broun, Westbrook Pegler, Hugh John son and others.
William Randolph Hearst has been the enfant terrible of local journav ism ever since he burst upon the New York scene in 1895, flushed by hh California triumphs, and began to publish the Morning Journal (afte wards the American). Although he made some popular innovations theo have been adopted by many other newspapers, he has contributed nothiru lasting to New York journalism. Even the American, his personal mout. In piece and considered the darling of all his papers, was never a profitable business and not solid enough to last. It was finally merged (1937) wit
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e & tabloid Mirror and the Evening Journal. The former-except for I thalter Winchell, the tattletale of the big city, who invented a private red tra nacular for the double purpose of enlivening gossip and avoiding libel, d Mark Hellinger, the mass-production O. Henry of Broadway-is a sivass between the superior Daily News and the Graphic of horrible, if netimes amusing, memory. The present Journal-American suffers from a ethora of features, and its news pages have gained little or nothing in W6 iber as a result of the merger.
que Another entrepreneur who failed to contribute anything solid to the hy's journalism was Frank Munsey, who invaded New York in 1891. He sus responsible for the death, by merger or otherwise, of so many papers atinut a wit was finally impelled to remark that "good newspapers when prey die go to Munsey." Yet the Sun was one sheet that managed to sur- eve the fatal Munsey touch, perhaps because it had preserved some of the tlength once imparted to it by its great editor, Charles A. Dana, and the g line of newspapermen who worked in the shadow of his formidable siputation-Samuel Hopkins Adams, Will Irwin, Edward ("Chimmie midden") Townsend, David Graham Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker and 9: reatest legend of them all) Richard Harding Davis.
After Munsey's death in 1925 the Sun was acquired by a group of his ialrmer employees. It caters to the ultra-conservative elements of the city, and inside pages reveal a fondness for the antiquarian and other features fmnich are of less than cosmopolitan interest. Though its news stories are Qually well written, there is little about it to suggest that it was once the ennewspaperman's newspaper."
ta New York of the early post-war period broke out with a rash of tab- eids. There appeared, within a few years of each other, the Daily News, ernarr Macfadden's now defunct Graphic, and Mr. Hearst's Mirror, al- Mady mentioned in this article. The Daily News, first in the field and the host successful of the lot, was started in 1919 by Captain Patterson of the hicago Tribune, and in less than ten years its circulation had soared well never the million mark. George Seldes attributes the amazing popularity of he tabloid at this time to the current disillusionment with the more sober teress in the post-war years. But a more convincing explanation of that hopopularity must take into account a physical form far more convenient for id bway and streetcar reading than that of the "full size" papers, an abund- thce of more or less sensational news pictures, and a condensed style of hews treatment that requires little time or effort for its mental digestion.
i In 1933, J. David Stern, who had been operating several Pennsylvania
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and New Jersey newspapers, took over what was left of the Evening Pa and restored its original name, the Post. New York's oldest survivi journal, it had been founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton and edit to at one time by William Cullen Bryant. Under E. L. Godkin, a firebra: Fia of New York journalism, and later under Oswald Garrison Villard, it h (Ru acquired a reputation for liberalism. This liberal inclination survived part even after it was taken over by Cyrus H. K. Curtis of Philadelph on Its news section and editorial page salaamed to Wall Street (a ritual g ture of the 1920's) and New York was mildly titillated each autumn Post editorials thundering against Harvard and Princeton teams f playing football with their social inferiors. But it supported many wort causes, including municipal reform, and it played a strong hand again John H. McCooey, late Tammany leader of Brooklyn, and throughout tu Seabury investigations.
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