Canned Commando

Because NBC and CBS make a fetish of avoiding recorded programs, two at least of the U.S. radio networks have let the British get ahead of them in the use of transcriptions. Those used by local U.S. stations have consisted mainly of music, light drama and advertising. But this month a series of British-style documentaries went out to more than 300 radio stations which use the Thesaurus Service of NBC's Radio-Recording Division. The best of the series, Commandos, proved that a canned program can be just as hot as one broadcast "live."

To make this recording, NBC men brought four Commandomen to their Manhattan studios and recorded ad lib interviews on their experiences. Then NBC arranged for a speech by Commando Commander Lord Louis Mountbatten. The records were skillfully woven into a composite half-hour interview.

One of the best soldiers'-eye-accounts of the war, Commandos reaches a climax of anti-theatrics when Lieut. Thomas Wilson Boyd describes his part in the March raid on the St. Nazaire submarine base. Assigned to draw fire away from the destroyer Campbeltown, Boyd had, says he, an "easy job." All he had to do was to take his motor gunboat into the river, get in the crossbeams of the German searchlights and stay there.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.