Radio Broadcast - 1925, February - 113 Pages ... - VacuumTubeEra

THE ANTENNA AT STATION 5IT, BIRMINGHAM
What We Are Doing With
Broadcasting
The Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Company
Compares English and American Broadcasting
BY CAPTAIN P. P. ECKERSLEY
Chief Engineer, British Broadcasting Company
I
THINK we will all agree
as broadcasters
that it is
certainly more blessed to send
than to receive. But at this particular
moment I do not know that I can agree
with that sentiment either, because it is
very
difficult in a short time to give you an adequate
picture of what we are doing on the other side.
May I say that in trying to paint this picture
I am only doing
it with the idea of not vaunting
it as the most wonderful thing that has
ever happened, nor decrying
it as the most
miserable. But to show you how broadcasting
has been misunderstood when comparisons
between national systems have been
undertaken, may state that I I have read in
some of your newspapers occasionally severe
criticisms of your own progress and of ours;
and I have seen foolish comparisons between
the two. There can be no comparison at all,
where the differences of areas are something
like six million square miles as compared with
a few hundred, and where there is a different
temperament of the people to be considered,
and different conditions in every sort of way.
In the first place, we were miles behind you.
You started broadcasting long before we did.
But the amateurs of England petitioned the
then Postmaster General two years ago that