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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, March 4, 1953
Ghost Audience?
KANU Misses Boat; Students Demand Lab
The University's FM radio station, KANU, is nearing the end of the first half-year's operation, not having fulfilled the objective such a station should have.
The station has given service to the state, to be sure, but it has not benefitted students enough to warrant the operating cost.
KANU has a full-time staff of 11, with more than 20 students employed as part-time help. However, unless a student can show some proficiency at handling a radio job, he is relegated to some ordinary office work. In other words, the student who is inexperienced, must be content with the few courses offered by the speech department or the School of Journalism, with little hope of getting practical training.
The state pays quite a bit for the operation of the station, disregarding installation costs. The yearly budget is $57,000 much of which goes for salaries of the above mentioned personnel.
Does the station have the programming, the listenership, and the rewards, then, to merit the operation of a professional station instead of a laboratory that still offers services?
R. Edwin Browne, director of the division of radio and television, believes it has. He offers some interesting information to support his beliefs. However, ideals and actualities often are far apart.
According to Mr. Brownne, the station has a 70-mile radius with over 1 million people in the area. An impartial Kansas radio survey conducted 10 months ago by Forrest Whan, showed that 19.3 per cent of the homes in the state were equipped to pick up FM transmission. Figures for northeastern counties further reveal that about 25 per cent of the homes could listen to the University's station.
With these figures, KANU officials estimate that more than 250,000 people are able to hear the station. But how many people purchased FM sets simply because they were in combinations with AM, television, or phonographs? Probably quite a few. With TV continuing its climb and AM radio fighting to regain some of the listenership stolen by the new medium, not much is left for the FM broadcaster.
They could, but would they?
The station is operated on the basis that it is a service to the state—fine idea. But it also operates on the idea that it will appeal to the segment of the population that would like to listen to something besides that offered by commercial stations. That is, it will educate those who supposedly are already educated.
Another boast of the station is that through tape recordings, the programs reach the entire state. The KU sports network is given as an example of service whereby the entire state can listen to Jayhawker games. It is maintained that it would take about the same size staff as they have now just to tape programs, rather than to live-broadcast them. Yet the KU sports network already existed when the radio division had just three employees.
And so students who are interested in a radio curriculum struggle along in make-shift laboratories while $57,000 a year goes to operate a professional station. And its merits are doubtful.
Service to the state need not stop because students do much of the work in connection with classes. Research needn't stop. Professionals are needed, to be sure—but to this extent? KANU, a potentially wonderful laboratory, was actually given to the University for student radio training.
Clarke Keys
Little Man on Campus
by Dick Bibler
"I say, Dean, isn't there something that can be done about this. 'B-average-in-the-major field' requirement?"
Let's use it.
Book Review
Typical Texan' Chronicles Growth of Lone Star Myth
THE TYPICAL TEXAN, Joseph Leach, Southern Methodist University Press, 1952. 178 pages.
"The Typical Texan is a large-sized Jabberwock, a hairy kind of gorilla, who is supposed to reside on a horse. He is half-alligator half-human, who eats raw buffalo meat and sleeps on the prairie. To fail to invite him to a drink is more dangerous than kicking a can of dynamite, for at best, the Typical Texan is peaceably only after he has killed everybody in sight and can find no fresh material to practice on."
Such was the report of an 1882 humorist about one of America's much-admired yet much-maligned character, the Typical Texan.
This book is his biography-a biography of an American myth.
Although the author admits that movies, fiction, radio, and television are helping to keep the legendary Texan alive, Mr. Leach points out that, at the least, "most Texans are still enthusiastically Texan* about everything," and he attempts to find
what portion of the legend is based on truth.
three men in particular are credited with bringing legendary fame to Texas; Davy Crockett, unshaven Congressman and feared hunter of Mexicans; Sam Houston, whose buckskin coat and gaudy blanket contributed to his fame in Washington, D. C., and William A. "Big Foot" Wallace, who encroaches on the pages of history because of size 12 shoes and a reputation for tall tales that were swallowed eagerly by an adventure-hungry, credulous American public of the 1800's.
Letters
Parents: Leave Those Kids Home
To the Editor of the Daily Kansan;
To the Editor of the Daily Kansan:
Frequently I hear members of the University community express annoyance at the vociferously unhappy presence of small children at evening performances on the campus. Two reasons are given for objecting to the attendance of the little ones at concert movies, plays and the kids' obvious mal-content makes the adults around them almost equally uncomfortable, and the ruckus they produce is on infringement upon the rights of others.
Having had small children of my own--ever since they were born, I think I know the deprivation of pleasure that parenthood involves; I hope, however, that the complementary joys are sufficient to make unnecessary publicly inflicting the sacrifices upon innocent non-parents who cannot share the private satisfactions. I know this will not win friends; I hope it will influence people.
George Herman Instructor of English
Mail Subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 year (add 1a) a semester at Kan. Every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, Uni- Entered second and examination periods. Entered second and examination periods. 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., Post Office
at Lawrence, Kni., Post One
under act of March 3, 1879.
Mr. Leach claims the habitual boasting of the Texan stemmed from the sight of "nature magnificent and boundless. Witnessing the elements operating upon the mightiest scale, he declares, the Texan fell easily, perhaps often unintentionally, into habitual exaggeration.
Such comments as, "We have often heard of NowHere, and supposed it was somewhere in Texas," caused the Texan to brag about his state in self-defense.
The Typical Texans, Mr. Leach concludes, satisfies a need of people to feel that "somewhere there exist the freedom and limitless opportunity which characterized the period of the last American frontier."
Mr. Leach's well-documented, light-hearted book brimming with anecdotes is sure to date as a joy to the reader, even though the subject matter, in the minds of some, may be too slight and limited in scope to justify hard-cover publication—even in Texas.
"The Typical Texan" is now available at Watson library's new book shelf.
-Bill Dickinson
Piano Recital Slated Tonight
A senior piano recital is being given today by Doris McConnell, fine arts senior, at 8 p.m. in Strong auditorium. There will be no admission charge.
OneWoman's OPINION
Rv MARY BETZ
The case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted atomic spies, is rapidly coming to be known as another "American Dreyfus" case. It puts the Rosenbergs' in a category with the Sacco-Vanzetti case of the 20's, the Haymarket Square case of the 80's, and similar cases.
Some examination of the facts in each case seems necessary to point out any parallels.
Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery captain of Jewish descent, was tried and convicted in 1894 of having sold important French military secrets to Germany. Court-martial and public degradation followed his conviction.
DIC
Actually Dreyfus was victimized by the jealousy and hate of a fellow officer (grandson of an Austrian nobleman), who himself had sold out to the Germans. Dreyfus was reinstated and given a promotion, the guilty man was acquitted when agitators proved Dreyfus' innocence.
The public conscience was salved a little by triumph of democratic principles when it should have smarted even more painfully from revelation of its anti-Semitism and political and social bigotry.
Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian-born anarchists, were tried and convicted for the murder of two payroll employees in South Braintree; Mass., in 1920.
The trial that followed was much more than a murder trial. Their ideals were on trial. The two men were convicted and later executed — ostensibly for murder, actually for their anarchism, for daring to speak against the beliefs of their adopted country. Liberals the world over protested the men were convicted "by atmosphere, not by evidence." Charges of prejudices were flung about; bitter demonstrations were staged against their conviction.
In the Haymarket Square incident of the 80's, eight anarchists were arrested for causing an outbreak of violence in a Chicago labor demonstration when a bomb was exploded.
Despite lack of evidence that the eight had made or thrown the bomb, despite their plea of innocence, they were convicted. Four were hanged and one committed suicide. The other three, after serving prison sentences, were pardoned by Illinois Gov. Altgeld seven years later on grounds that the trial had been unjust.
Like that of Sacco and Vanzetti and the Haymarket anarchists, their cause has aroused sympathy the world over. To sympathizers, they have been convicted unjustly. America is the country where minority offenders often are convicted by public opinion in a time of mass hysteria against their beliefs.
The Rosenbergs are guilty, investigations have shown. Their crime was a serious one—giving a foreign nation our wartime secrets. Their execution will place them in the category of martyrs to the undemocratic people of the world.
Imprisonment for the Rosenbergs is right. They have committed a crime. But their execution will only add fuel to the fires of feeling against America being spread by Russia and her satellite nations.
KUVictoryViewed By K-State Poet
Editor's note: We have made it a bit nicer to this one, but also seems so appropriate that we thought we would print it. It was post-marked in Manhattan.
20 the Editor of the Daily Kansan;
Little, Jack Godman
J the Lifter of the Danny Kirkham
Little Jack Godner,
Sat in his fieldhouse,
Watching his tall kitty plays,
When along came old Fogger,
With his fantastic Jayhawkers,
And outhustled the Cats all the
Slough to Speak Tonight
Medical law as applied to occupational therapy will be discussed by M. C. Slough, associate professor of law, at the Occupational Therapy club meeting at 7:15 p.m. today in the Pine room of the Union. M. Slough will stress the psychiatry aspects of medical law. Dorothy Morris, fine arts junior, will introduce the speaker.