Elementary Esthetics

The Government of Argentina last week ordered Buenos Aires radio station "El Pueblo" to cease & desist from broadcasting the sound of a horse neighing. Reason: the sound is "contrary to elementary esthetic standards."

Flash

Reporters come in fresh from planes and landing craft, the dust of Normandy still on them. As they sit down at a typewriter, you notice that they look more healthy than the people who have worked in this hotbox since Dday. . . . There are no filing cabinets down here, no desks, just a long table ringed with typewriters. There aren't enough chairs. It's a triumph of cooperation between the American networks that no man has yet been forced to write his copy standing up.

Thus CBS's European news chief, Ed Murrow, described the London room from which, all last week, came the U.S.'s swiftest and most dramatic news of the invasion. It was one of the small, windowless, ill-ventilated cubbyholes deep in the basement recesses of the massive Ministry of Information. There the four big U.S. networks forgot their rivalries in a common passion to get out the biggest news of World War II. It was U.S. radio's biggest moment, and radio did a job.

Profits went by the board. Sponsors had been told that their commercial programs would be canceled, and they were (NBC canceled every one). On the first day a CBS-Hooper survey estimated that listening was 82% above normal.

Voices of History. Listeners lucky enough to be awake through the first night of broadcasting had an experience they will remember to their graves. Into their living rooms came the voices of history: General Eisenhower and his supporting actors in the great drama (TIME, June 12); then, before dawn broke over the Eastern U.S., the first eyewitness reports by U.S. correspondents fresh back from the fighting. Each report had a compelling immediacy, and all were ably done. Among the best: NBC's Merrill Mueller reporting the look and feel of Eisenhower's headquarters; CBS's Richard Hottelet sketching a Marauder's-eye view of the ship-packed Channel and invasion coast; Mutual's Larry Meier describing a landing.

Back in New York, bulletins were so few that studio broadcasters had to talk their throats dry. CBS News Chief Paul White plugged in his teletypewriter-lined news room, let listeners hear the buzz and bells that filled it. His ace Manhattan newscaster, Bob Trout, was a marvel of glibness and endurance. Trout's performance was matched by Robert St. John, backstop for NBC News Head, William Brooks. TIME Views the News, on the Blue was consistently cool and factual.

Vivid Gadget. The portable recorders carried straight into battle by some radiomen (best was the Navy's film recorder) gave war reporting a vividness it has never had before. NBC's Wright Bryan had a recorder aboard a transport plane going in with paratroops. He described the scene and tension admirably, but none of his words matched the fateful clicks as the paratroopers hooked up their automatic release belts. A BBC recording caught a bargeload of British Tommies singing For Me and My Gal on their way to Normandy.

George Hicks, the Blue Network's tall, begoggled, modest London news chief, who has been a radioman for 16 years, turned in the best recordings of them all. One was a beachhead interview with a Brooklyn sailor who had helped bring the first wave over. Another, which was repeated over & over again by U.S. networks, had everything. It was an account of the Nazi bombing of the U.S. flagship (probably a cruiser) Hicks was aboard during the Channel crossing. His calm description of the scene was accompanied by the sound of the ship's ack-ack guns, the gunfire from nearby ships,'the calling of all hands to General Quarters, the excited comments of the gun crew making their first kill, the hurt shriek of a wounded German plane diving toward the worried waters of the Channel. Excerpts:

"Our own ship is just sounding the warning [siren screech] and now flak is coming up in the sky with streamers from the warships behind us. ... Now the darkness has come on us. These planes you hear overhead are the motors of the Nazis coming and going in the cloudy sky. . . . [Deep boom']. . . . That was a bomb hit. Another one! Fire bursts and the flak and streamers going out in a diagonal slant (loud crash of ack-ack) right over our head. . . . Flares are coming down now. You can hear the machine gunning. . . . Here's heavy ack-ack now [loud firing and muffled shouts of crew']. . . . Here we go again! Another plane has come over (roar of motors). . . . The cruiser right alongside us is pouring it up (sound of ack-ack). . . . Something burning is falling down through the sky and circling down. It may be a hit plane (machine-gun fire). Here we go. They got one! They got one! . . . (Gun crew voices: "We made it look like polka dots!") The lights of that burning Nazi plane are just twinkling now in the sea and going out. . . . Now it's ten past twelve, the beginning of June 7, 1944."

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