The Wireless
THE WIRELESS
The wireless was not only a source of news, it was the main provider of culture and entertainment.
Children’s Hour, from five o’clock to six, was one of the highlights of the day. Aimed at children from five to fifteen, it tried to be both educational and entertaining and, by and large, succeeded in both. It featured series taken from well known books, like Kipling’s Just So Stories, Sherlock Holmes, Winnie the Pooh, Worzel Gummidge and the Jennings school stories and many more.
Before we moved house, in 1961, the only television we saw on a regular basis was between seven o’clock and half nine on Sunday evenings after the evening Church service when we visited a friend of my mother’s while my father and her husband went for a drink at the local parish club.
Every week, our programme was the same – first, a Western or crime series like Gunsmoke, Maverick, Hawaiian Eye or 77 Sunset Strip, followed by Sunday Night at the London Palladium – a variety show during which Take Your Pick (transferred from Radio Luxembourg) was a highlight, a switch to the BBC at nine for the news and then home.
I enjoyed my television interval each week but I was brought up listening to the radio and, looking back I can understand the answer given by a schoolboy who was asked shortly after his parents had bought their first television set:
"Which do you prefer, television or radio?”
“I think I prefer the radio.”
“Oh, why?”
“Because the pictures are better.”
I think that comment sums up very nicely the difference between the world of imagination in the 1950s, when each one of us created our own pictures inside our head from what we heard on the radio, and today’s world where children are bombarded by a stream of images reflecting either a dumbed-down reality or someone else’s vision of their imagination.
