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Chapter 3 Brows High and Fevered The purpose of radio programs should be to convey ideas to the greatest public possible in a pleasing manner, but, as with any other means of entertainment, the elevation of the taste of the public, influence toward the cultural or moral and spiritual, should be the greatest point of consideration. —John Warren Erb, musical director of WHAP, 1927 1 By and large it was the large corporate stations that occupied the cultural and ethical high ground in the 1920s, while commercial independents espoused more commercial and populist cultural agendas. An exception to this rule was WHAP, an exceptionally well-heeled independent that joined the increasingly crowded ether above New York City in late 1925. Easily the most militant defender of genteel cultural values to hold a stake in the early airwaves, WHAP was anomalous in other ways as well. In its peculiarity, the story of WHAP throws the key themes of this study—the volatile utopianism that surrounded the birth of broadcasting , and the bitterness of the warfare over broadcasting’s proper cultural content—into particularly vivid relief. WHAP came into the world defining itself as the antithesis of stations like WHN. A publicity item for WHAP planted in the pages of The Country Editor, a suburban New Jersey revue, positioned New York’s new ‘‘Station for Public Service’’ as an overdue antidote to broadcasters who polluted the airwaves ‘‘with the stormy clamor of jazz’’ and ‘‘thinly cloaked indecencies hurled upon the air from the lips of soaked or halfsoaked announcers, to find lodgment in the sanctuaries of the just as in the malodorous dens of the vicious.’’2 The Herald Tribune elaborated on WHAP’s corrective mission on the day before the station’s grand opening . ‘‘Believing that those who favor jazz and vaudeville songs are already receiving an ample volume of this material from other stations,’’ the paper announced,’’ WHAP will not broadcast any music of this type at any time.’’3 Instead, reported the New York Times two days later, WHAP 58 Chapter 3 intended to ‘‘confine itself to classical and semi-classical music and to educational talks by noted university lecturers and well known authorities .’’4 WHAP additionally presented itself as the fulfillment of the frequently expressed hope that elite cultural philanthropy might rescue radio from the burden of self-support. Prior to WHAP, only one serious attempt had been made to implement such a solution for broadcasting’s financial woes: the Radio Music Fund, which, as was related in Chapter 2, was cut down before its prime in the crossfire between WHN and WEAF. Supposedly stepping in where the previous initiative had failed was William H. Taylor, identified in WHAP’s press materials as a ‘‘wellknown millionaire philanthropist, traveler, connoisseur [and] patron of the arts.’’ Socially and financially speaking, Taylor was an insignificant figure compared to the Warburgs and the Juilliards, erstwhile patrons of the Radio Music Fund. Still, as owner of a railcar factory, a clutch of Pennsylvania coal companies, and controlling shares in a New York bank, Taylor was a bona fide millionaire. What’s more, he was observed to be sparing no expense in endowing WHAP with first-rate technical facilities.5 Pricking up his ears at this hopeful new development, the radio critic Raymond Francis Yates of the Herald Tribune wrote in early December 1925 that ‘‘with the advent of WHAP, the subway-ridden island of Manhattan now presents the most complete and compact exhibition of broadcasting in all its phases that is to be found anywhere.’’ Yates proceeded to categorize New York’s radio stations according to their economic functions. ‘‘Direct financial return from persons and business desirous of public goodwill,’’ he wrote, ‘‘is WEAF’s reason for existence. The stimulation of receiving set-sales is the why behind WJZ and WJY [Westinghouse-RCA]. . . . Direct financial return from persons and business desirous of ethereal advertising keeps WMCA, WHN, and WFBH on the air. . . . And now WHAP blossoms forth as a purely philanthropic station.’’ Each motive, noted Yates, produced ‘‘its own type of programpresentation .’’ In his estimation, it was the ‘‘goodwill seekers among the broadcasters’’ who were most successful in producing good programs, as opposed to ‘‘those stations in search of quick returns, either for themselves or their sponsors.’’ But the goodwill impulse seemed troublingly vulnerable to the critic, predicated as it was on a ‘‘paradoxical platform; namely, the exploitation of altruism’’ for commercial gain. ‘‘Take away the...

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