Preparing the Radio Address.

 

Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief (of police or fire department), preacher, teacher, politician-everyone, in brief, is likely to be called upon to speak to the radio audience today. Milton J. Cross, the noted announcer, describes radio speaking as "one-way conversation with everyone [in the radio audience] as an individual." The radio. conversationalist must not be a bore, he must have interesting material to discuss, he must present it in an attractive way, and his personality must be pleasantly projected to the distant listener. An examination of the best radio speakers shows that they have observed the interesting things in life and have developed what has been described by one writer as the "daily -theme eye." The majority have "done things," have lived lives teeming with interest or excitement, and consequently have become engaging conversationalists. They have discovered human interests and are wise in their judgment of proprieties and public appeal. A drab personality is wearying to the dial. As the radio speaker has been introduced into the home by the announcer, it is unnecessary for him to open with any salutation; his task is to prove himself to be immediately an interesting, bright, and courteous guest. A pertinent anecdote that will lead quickly into the subject, which has been wisely chosen to interest the majority of average listeners, forms an excellent introduction. The speaker who uses homely expressions and introduces into his broadcast illustrations drawn from everyday life is much more apt to reach the intelligence of his listeners. The "great speaker," the classroom lecturer, and the spellbinder politician have no place in the living room of the home. The radio talk must interweave information and human interest. Classroom methods are taboo on the air. Education must be adapted to radio, not radio to education. It is essential that the writer of a radio address forget textbooks, auditorium audiences, and congregations and think more in terms of human interest. Relate the subject to the listener, his life, his pocketbook, his everyday realities. The choice of a subject is of primary importance in order to compete with the entertainment on a neighboring kilocycle. Make it easy for the listener to follow your trend of thought by carefully organizing the talk. Consider first the limited time on the air allotted to you and select a topic that can be adequately treated in that period. You will speak about 140 words a minute. How many minutes have you in the clear? Do not try to crowd too much into the ears and minds of your listeners. Do not depend upon your listener to fill in any gaps. Idea should follow idea with a naturalness that makes for clear understanding. A good formula for the organization of the radio talk has been set forth by Morse Salisbury, chief of the Radio Service of the United States, Department of Agriculture: 

1. An interest -getting opening paragraph (a quip, wisecrack, or an anecdote; he may start with a reference to something that is certain to be in the foreground of the thinking of most of his listeners and work from that into the theme of his talk). 

2. A summary of the points the talk is going to cover. 

3. A swift, interesting development of the summary outline. 

4. A final summary to clinch the points in the minds of the listeners. 

5. A direction to the listeners interested in adopting the practice the talk has urged, telling them where to acquire further information. 

The most difficult part of the radio address is the opening sentence. I have often read over radio lectures and picked out a sentence containing an important statement, a surprising fact, or a charming rhythm and transferred this sentence to the opening. Although writing for the radio uses the same general forms and is governed by the same general rules of grammar and construction that govern writing for print, language to be thoroughly. successful when broadcast by radio-has certain specific requirements not necessarily met by the printed word. It is true that good stories, articles, and poetry written for print may prove to be good broadcasting material. Their success is not necessarily due to the fact that they read well from print, but to the fact that they happen also to fulfill the requirements of radio. The first major problem of the writer for radio is the same as that of any writer-communication. Thus the first requirement is to make the ideas understandable to the audience. Whether the purpose is to instruct, to persuade, or to entertain, the writer must use language within the comprehension of his audience; he must explain new things in terms of old. But there is a fundamental difference between the relation of the radio writer to his audience and the relation between the writer of material for print and his readers. The words of the author who writes for print are a permanent record before the reader; the words of the radio writer fall on the ears of his listener and, unless they make an impression immediately, they are lost. Because he must make his entire impression on the audience through the sense of hearing, the radio writer must be more careful than any other to write in terms understandable to the audience and to make his sentences as clear as possible. A reader in doubt as to the meaning of a word usually can find the meaning in a dictionary without. too much inconvenience. If he misses the point of a sentence, he can reread it as many times as are necessary. If he forgets a statement having some bearing on a later part of the paper, he can refer back to it as often as he wishes. The person listening to a speech cannot stop to look up unfamiliar words without danger of losing part of the speech. And if he does not understand every sentence as the speaker utters it, he immediately loses the continuity of the talk, and the purpose of the speech is defeated. 

Vocabulary.

 Edgar Dale, in an article entitled "Vocabulary Level of Radio Addresses," reports the results of an investigation conducted with speeches that were presented over the Ohio School of the Air and The American School of the Air, especially for school children. The investigation involved a study of the words used by the speakers to determine how many of them the listening students did not know. After the speeches were finished, Mr. Dale selected the words that might possibly give some difficulty and asked the children to indicate which ones they could not define. In one instance he found that 12 per cent of the words were unknown to 29 per cent of the pupils. Many of the words unknown were the verbs and keywords of the sentences; among them were words like aspire, attain, concentrate, and abstain. Others which should have been easily recognized. by the speakers themselves as outside the scope of grammar -school pupils were feasibility, ramifications, amenable, and forecasting. Needless to say, much of a speech employing words of this type passed over the heads of the audience. Mr. Dale found, on the other hand, that the speaker who was voted by teachers as the most successful to broadcast in the Ohio School of the Air used in a speech of 1950 words only 10 words not known to 25 per cent of the children. It is interesting to note also that every one of these 10 words was a geographical term, the acquisition of which was in part the purpose of the speech. When asked how he went about writing his speech, the speaker accounted for his success by explaining that he took particular care in selecting words that would be within the scope of the listeners. Whenever he was in doubt as to the wisdom of using a particular word, he referred to Thorndike's Teachers' Word Book, which lists some 20,000 words and classifies them according to the ability of children of different ages to understand them. This experiment, it is true, was carried on in a specialized field of radio broadcasting in which simplicity was absolutely necessary. However, the principle behind it is applicable to the general field of radio. For, although the audience may not be composed of children, the problem of the vocabulary level still remains. Indeed, there is the added problem of adjusting the vocabulary to a heterogeneous audience. There may be educated and uneducated people, old and young people, sophisticates from metropolitan districts and innocents from the backwoods in the audience; the writer of radio speeches must write for all of them. On special occasions, when a speech is directed toward a specific audience, the writer can have some definite idea of its educational and cultural background and adjust his vocabulary accordingly. But the majority of speeches are made under the assumption that anyone within range of a radio -receiving set can listen and understand; consequently the best answer to the question of vocabulary level for radio speeches is, aim them at the average radio listener. Thorndike places the average American intelligence at fourteen years. The radio writer will do well to use in his speeches for a general audience only those words familiar to the average high-school pupil. Thorndike's book is probably the most reliable source for determining what words can be included in the list. Fully as disconcerting to the audience as the use of unfamiliar words is the use of allusions to persons and events about which listeners have no knowledge. If the speaker is sure his audience is made up of college graduates, he can reasonably assume a knowledge of history and literature, but, if his speech is directed toward a general audience, he must explain most of the allusions he makes to things not immediately in the experience of the audience. 

Sentences. 

The problem of making the radio speech understandable to the audience is not entirely a matter of vocabulary. The structure of sentences plays an even greater part in the clearness of the material presented. The meaning of á word may sometimes be guessed from the context in which it is found, but, if the thought is obscured by complicated and involved sentence structure, the audience will make no effort to solve the maze of words in order to find out what it is all about. The first requirement of sentence structure is that there be absolute clarity. The hest way to be sure of this clarity is to write in simple and compound sentences, and, when complex sentences are injected to avoid monotony, to make them free from all difficult clauses that might be ambiguous or obscure. It is easy for the writer who knows precisely what he means by the sentences he writes, and who can easily follow his own trend of thought, to forget how short the memory span of his listener is, and to go on attaching prefatory and attributive phrases to sentences which would precisely have been clear and effective standing alone but which are made difficult and pointless to the audience by the compilation. The material that is written into the added phrases can easily be put into other sentences, thus gaining much in the way of understandability and not losing heavily in emphasis. A dangerous pitfall for the radio writer is the habit, of which he is sometimes quite unconscious, of adding idea after idea to sentences with the connecting word "which," trusting that the listener will trail along with him and make all the necessary connections. The solution is in breaking up the sentences into shorter ones, making complete simple sentences of the phrases. Another practice equally as offensive to the radio listener, but nevertheless common among speakers, especially those whose subject is of a somewhat scientific nature, is the use of the relative pronouns "this" or "that" to refer to a whole complex idea which may have taken several sentences or even paragraphs to develop. The listener is unable to carry in his mind all the details of the idea and may have entirely forgotten the point to which the speaker wishes to refer. The relative pronoun calls up no answering response in his consciousness, and consequently he misses the point completely. If the writer would insert in a new sentence a short summarizing statement of the idea referred to by the pronoun, the familiar words would serve to stimulate the recollection, on the part of the listener, of the essentials of the idea, and he would make the correct connections, grasping the full significance of the sentence. The use of other expressions to designate something that has gone before, such as, "the above," "the former," "the latter," are also out of place in the radio speech. They serve only to confuse the listener, for the chances are he cannot remember the statement or idea to which the writer refers, if there has been any considerable amount of material presented in the interval. The trouble with a great many writers is that they are afraid to write for the intellectual middle class because they think it may give the impression that they are not capable of writing for the learned. They throw into their writing big words just to give an impression of knowledge. Of course, there is the danger that, in attempting to keep the language on a level to fit the average of the American public, the writer will acquire the attitude of writing down to his audience, giving them the feeling that he knows they are intellectually inferior to him and that he is doing his best to explain things in words of one syllable. This result is just as undesirable as the confusion that is the result of too difficult language, for it produces an antagonism toward the speaker. To avoid an attitude of this kind in writing, the radio writer need only remember that there may be people in the audience who know just as much about his subject as he does, or a great deal more. The person who reads the material over the microphone, whether he is the same one who wrote it or another, can do much toward the success or failure of the speech. A good reading may improve any material, just as poor reading may ruin the best. Likewise, the quality of the written material can influence tremendously the success of the reader. These possibilities must be considered seriously when the material is written. The limitations of vocal expression must be recognized. All the sounds in the English language can be made singly without effort, but there are some sounds which, appearing in combination, are almost certain to cause the best of speakers to stumble. Many a man ha .s tripped up on a phrase like " especially susceptible." No matter how carefully the speech is rehearsed before broadcasting, the tension before the microphone is likely to bring about an unforeseen difficulty in the pronunciation of some sound. Therefore, it is essential that the speeches be carefully checked for any possible tongue twisters before going on the air. The diction should be vivid and colorful, presenting word pictures to the listeners. Most writers fail to search for verbs and adverbs to carry the burden of action description. There is a tendency to rely too much on adjectives. Sibilants, while not emphasized as they were by the carbon microphones, still do not broadcast well; when it is practicable to do so, other words with similar meanings should be used for words containing awkward sibilant repetition (" crime " in place of "lawlessness," " gratitude" in place of "thanks"). Slang and colloquialisms may be used, but they have a tendency to be local in character and may not be understood by the distant listener. Modifying phrases should be placed so that no misunderstanding can exist as to what word or group of words they modify. Do not separate the subject and verb by long distances. If modifying clauses or phrases necessarily intervene, repeat the subject. Be very certain that the relation of relative pronouns is clear and correct. Conjunctions are inclined to drag sentences to great lengths; consequently they should be used sparingly. Naturalness in speech will suggest the use of contractions. By all means use them. However, there are times when emphasis will require the avoidance of a contraction. The style of the radio talk is conversational, with ideas so expressed that the listener not only may but must understand. Written style lacks the informality needed in radio. Every effort should be made in the written copy to make it sound like an extemporaneous talk when heard. The effective radio speaker writes and speaks in the first and second person, the active voice, and the indicative or imperative mood. So important is the use of the second person that one can almost judge the radio suitability of a manuscript by counting the number of times "you" appears on a page. If one does not find it used at least three or four times, the material may be suitable for print, but not often appropriate for the loud -speaker. An example that illustrates both the personal and the action -picture features needed in radio is the following opening from a printed article on "Spring Hiking": This is the season when the lure of forest and field is felt by all. The fragrance of new -grown things is in the air. . . . And here is the same, revised as it should he for radio: When this season rolls around, you feel the lure to go out into field and forest. You want to fill your nostrils with the fragrance of new -grown things. . . . Transitional words will serve to hold the plan of the address together for the listener. The speaker uses "fillers," such as "now," for these expressions give spontaneity and conversational atmosphere. When the rules and regulations of grammar interfere with the transfer of an idea by words, such rules should be amended. Grammatical murder cannot be defended but an occasional misdemeanor is inoffensively human. Do not try to be funny, but allow a little humor to creep in, although never the slapstick, burlesque type. Humor should never be injected into a speech simply for the sake of being funny, unless, of course, the entertainer is listed as a comedian. Humor may be used in a radio speech to relieve the seriousness and heaviness of the speech and to create a pleasant feeling between speaker and audience. Avoid irony, which may not be understood by those who cannot see your expression. Sarcasm and bitterness are not pleasant to the listener. On the other hand, do not be a sweet Pollyanna. The length of the address should be somewhat flexible with paragraphs toward the end that can be omitted or added as the time requires. Some speakers slow up under the emotional tension of the microphone; others accelerate. The talks should be rehearsed and timed. Speakers frequently place time notations in the margins of their manuscripts with which they attempt to conform. The manuscript should be typed double space, on rough paper that will not rattle. Only one side of the paper should be used. The pages must be clearly numbered and arranged in order. They should be neither clipped together nor folded. Never continue a sentence from one page to another. While the speaker shifts his gaze from the bottom line of one page to the top line of the following page, there is bound to be a pause that will sound unnatural. Almost every broadcasting station requires a copy of the manuscript for its files. It is wise for the radio speaker to furnish the announcer, well in advance, brief introductory material to be used in presenting him to the radio audience and in defining his subject matter. This procedure assures the announcer of accurate and up-to-date information about the qualifications of the speaker to discuss the chosen topic and increases the attractiveness of the program.