Judith C. Waller Quotes

Then came the era of 'box-tops' and 'thrillers.' It is not strange that the advertiser, in his search for the right kind of program to catch the attention of the largest number of youngsters, turned to the comic strips.

In many industries federal regulation is the outgrowth of inadequate self-regulation on the part of the industry.

As Mary Grannon, the beloved Mary of The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's 'Just Mary' hour says:
So many parents are clinging to some favorite story in their own youth and measuring all children's material by it - forgetting what the last minstrel found out in his travels, that 'old times are changed, old manners gone, a stranger fills the Stuart's throne.' Let's not be like the bigots of the iron time; let's be rooters for the modern.

For a while parents seemed to forget that their responsibility as parents did not cease when the child turned on the radio; rather it increases. In the August, 1938, issue of Your Life, Mary Linton has this to say to the parent who is blaming everyone but himself for his child's actions:
It isn't up to the teachers in the schools, nor the Federal Radio Commissioners, nor anyone else on earth. It's up to us - it's our job! Our job to teach them right from wrong, honesty from dishonesty, a clean and intelligent attitude toward sex, a healthful fastidiousness about their own bodies. We can teach these things because we have the daily opportunity of knowing our children and their reactions.

Doctor James Rowland Angell has said that 'any program may be regarded as educational (and here we may substitute the words 'a public service') in purpose which attempts to increase knowledge, to stimulate thinking, to teach techniques and methods, to cultivate discernment, appreciation, and taste, or to enrich character by sensitizing emotion and by inspiring socialized ideals that may issue on constructive conduct.

The majority of the people in the United States have had only an elementary education and have a speaking vocabulary of about two thousand words. (Even a well-educated person has a speaking vocabulary of approximately nine thousand words.)

One hundred fifty years is not long in the reckoning of a hill. But to a man it's long enough.
One hundred fifty years is a week end to a redwood tree, but to a man it's two full lifetimes.
One hundred fifty years is a twinkle to a star, but to a man it's time enough to teach six generations what the meaning is of liberty, how to use it, when to fight for it.

Mrs. [Sidonie Matsner] Gruenberg [in Radio and Children]. . . says:
Probably the 'good' effects upon children's characters are as unpremeditated as the 'bad.' We have not yet found any sure way through our didactic teaching or other devices to make our children 'good.' We may at least suspect that some of the objectionable lessons are equally ineffective in making them 'bad.

It is scarcely fair . . . to permit only those with sufficient funds to spend to appropriate that which, in reality, is the property of all people.

The code of the National Association of Broadcasters enunciates as a cardinal principle in American radio the provision of time by stations, without charge, for the presentation of public questions of a controversial nature. At the same time, it advises against the sale of time for the presentation of controversial issues except in the case of political broadcasts during political campaigns. The basic foundation for the prohibition against the sale of time for the presentation of controversial issues is the public duty of broadcasters to present such issues, regardless of the willingness of others to pay for their presentation. If time were sold for that purpose, it would have to be sold to all with the ability to pay, and as a result the advantage in any discussion would rest largely with those having the greater financial means to buy broadcasting time.

the Chicago Tribune said on February 8, 1937: . . . . there is entertainment in erudition.

In a sense, the recording stylus and its reverse component have defeated time. Up until a little more than a generation ago, the sound of a word once uttered, a violin note once played, were possible treasures dropped into the none too safe repository of human memory; but the same sounds transferred to a wax or plastic or film or wire can live and vibrate again fifteen minutes or fifty years from now.

it is impossible today to know how much the war colored the thinking and attitudes of the child of today.

Advertisers as well as political leaders long ago found that it is easier to appeal to the people through the heart than through the mind. Programs built with an emotional people are sure to draw the largest audiences and the biggest response. Workers in the field of educational radio are loath to acknowledge this truism, maintaining that certain programs must be built to appeal to the intellect. Of course, they are right, but that is the minority appeal.

The health of democracy, not its hate, is its best propaganda.