Rat Race?

In spite of its big money, commercial radio has not attracted many big-name writers. The restrictions under which they work are irksome. Their work, by the time it goes on the air, is rarely distinguishable as their own. Sponsors insist that words and ideas be tailored to their own standards. Networks, anxious to offend no one, demand conformation to a list of rigid taboos.

One writer, fed up with this situation, last week lashed out in the New York Times. He was Norman Rosten, 31, poet-dramatist who has also written for radio (Cavalcade of America). Said he:

"Most of radio writing is polemic or melodrama when it is not merely nonsense. . . . The writer in radio faces an audience whose prejudices and mores are so diverse that he is forced to get at the lowest common emotional denominator. . . . Radio writing, as it is now developed, is simply an adjunct of advertising. The word is fitted to the Product. The Product is God. The word is the interval between the announcements of God. . . . This is hardly a condition for literature. It is a rat race.

"What can be done? Much. ... I submit the following . . . program: 1) Get back some of the control over writing which is now almost exclusively in the hands of the sponsor. ... 2) Stop clipping the author on script rights. . . . 3) Repeat worth-while plays. ... 4) Finally, and most important, let us have a wider outlet for non-commercial radio drama--and pay for it.

"By non-commercial radio I do not mean simply any sustaining series. ... I mean a half-hour each week on each network for a program of original radio, plays. ... In poetry or prose. Anyway we please. . . . The writers are here, and some good ones. ... It might well usher in a renaissance in radio drama. How about it, NBC, CBS, American and Mutual? Put up or ... shut up ... or forever hold your pronouncements about radio coming of age. We are nearing the middle of the 20th Century. Shall the singing commercial and the Lone Ranger inherit the earth?"

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