Evening star., 1935-11-10

popular programs among all classes
and ages. After old songs, preferences
run in this order: Dance orchestras,
news, symphonies, foot ball, drama,
humorists, sports, educational talks,
psychology, operas, short stories, box
ing, famous people, health, base ball,
literature, national politics, history,
vocal artists and organ music.
Their findings, based on a question
naire listing ~ different types OF
programs and distributed to more
than 1000 persons. are published In
a new book, THE Psychology OF
Radio" issued from the presses OF
Harper g. Bros. The co-authors are
DR.. Hadley Cantril and DR.. Gordon
w. Allport, who used the Harvard
Psychological Laboratory as their test
ing ground during the last year. DR..
Allport is still on the Harvard staf1
and DR.. Cantril is now with Colum-
tia University.
The sample of listeners. they state,
was drawn partly from an urban COM
munity in Massachusetts,, undoubtedly
Boston and it's suburbs. and partly
from small towns and rural areas in
New York State. Both sexes were
equally represented. The occupational
and cultural level of both men and
women were regarded as representing
"a typical crosscut of the American
population" The findings of other
experimenters in the same field Of re-
search were drawn upon freely.
Although the rank-order Of prefer
ences by sex and age are also analyzed,
the Harvard psychologists struck COM
posite grand totals" from their list Of
AZ types of programs to rank the fol-
lowing types of renditions in the sec
ond preference brackets. also in order
after the aforementioned organ music:
Dance music, new jazz songs, educa-
tional methods, hockey, detective
stories. classical music, tennis, engi-
neering, physics or chemistry, church
music. astronomy, poetry, jazz singers,
phonograph records, foreign language
instruction. sermons, recipes and cook
ing, fashion reports. political speeches,
business and stock reports and ad-
vertisements.
THE rankings vary of course as be-
= tween men and women and &C
cording to ages. For example, II you
are a man under 80. Dr. Cantril and
DR.. Airport assert in their book, that
your first 10 preferences are in this
order Sports, foot ball, dance or
chestras. boxing, base ball, hockey.
news events, old song favorites, tennis
and symphonies. If you are man over
80, your order of preferences would
be: Old song favorites and base ball
(equaD, humorists, news events, sports,
boxing. national policies. drama, edu-
cational talks and symphonies.
If you are a woman under 30, this
is the way they analyze your prefer
ences Dance orchestras, foot ball.
symphonies, drama, old song favorites,
new jazz songs, operas. news, short
stories, literature, psychology, foot ball
and organ music. If you are woman
over 80, your preferences would rank
thus: Operas, old song favorites, SYM
phonies. humorists news, drama. organ
music, educational talks, vocal artists
famous people and national politics.
The Harvard professors did not un-
dertake to study the preferences of
children, but they quote the late Prof.
F. H. Lumley of Ohio State University
as finding that 10 to 14-year-old chill
dren made the following choices for
the programs coming to them during
school hours: Dramatized stories,
dramalogues based on the lives Of great
explorers and inventors, programs from
foreign countries, historical events told
by witnesses, talks by famous men
and women, musical programs with
songs for them to sing and accounts
of child's travels around the world.
A study of preferences Of high school
children in Oakland, Calf. showed
that they liked the following types of
radio programs in the order given:
Short plays, variety programs, play
by-play sports, comedy, dance music,
news, crooners, quartets, symphonies,
classical music and talks.