Plaques and Hopes

Variety gave out last week its annual plaques for good work in radio. Made after a survey of radio "showmanagement," the 1941 awards were acute, opinionated, and hopeful.

In 1940 Variety gave no award for radio criticism, grimly announcing that "there is no such thing in the U.S. as serious radio criticism except in this and one or two other business publications." This year it tendered a tentative laurel to the New York Times radio department and its editor of the past six months, shy, slight John K. Hutchens, for "a promising type of literate analysis. . . ."

Variety's other awards showed a healthy width of horizon:

> For the second year it singled out a Latin American station, this time Radio El Mundo of Buenos Aires, for first-class broadcasting.

> Denver's Rocky Mountain Radio Council, a cooperative organization of regional stations and colleges, was honored for progress toward "freeing the local station from its inert attitude of reliance on either network programs or transcriptions. . . ."

> Among North American stations cited for initiative were WJNO, West Palm Beach; WQAM, Miami; CKCL, Toronto; WCAU, Philadelphia; WJR, Detroit; WLW and WCKY, Cincinnati; WNYC, Manhattan and KGO-KPO, San Francisco.

> Variety bestowed kudos on NBC for its short-wave division, on Mutual for its public-relations department, on CBS for its lavish program series, Forecast.

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