No Hiding Place

Time was when any citizen who got tired of his radio could turn the thing off. But last week time was running out. A floodtide of sound-that-can't-be-turned-off was rising across the U.S.

In Washington, St. Louis, Cincinnati and a dozen other cities, buses and streetcars have been wired for sound. (Moaned a Washington bus rider: "Wasn't it Hitler who tried to drive the Austrian chancellor crazy by forcing him to listen to the radio?") In many places, including Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh and southern New England, grocery stores were blaring music and commercials. (Stanley Joseloff, president of Storecast Corp. of America, said happily: "It's radio plus. We get a 100% listening audience at the point of sale because everyone who's there has to hear it.")

By last week, the flood had reached Manhattan. From 60 loudspeakers spotted throughout the wide halls and rabbit warrens of Grand Central Terminal, commuters were pursued by the Blue Danube and the persuasive commercial. F. LeMoyne Page, president of Terminal Broadcasting, Inc., promised to "permeate the whole place" with music broken every 2 1/2 minutes by commercial spot-announcements. "Right now," said Page, '"we're experimenting with the difference in volume caused by the number of people. Ideally, we'd like to develop a 'thermostatic-type' control that would set the volume to the changing volume of passengers."

New York's Herald Tribune, in an editorial edged with alarm, noted that "twenty-five times an hour clear-spoken announcers will give the hapless traveler superlative descriptions of beer, cigarettes, salves, toothpaste, watches and so on." The Tribune did not look forward to the day when the hucksters will have perfected "the technique of making not-listening impossible."

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