Happy Few

The British Broadcasting Corp. does not enjoy a reputation for daring. But the BBC has done some things that would scare the antennae off U.S. radio. Its latest deed of derring-do is the "Third Program" (TIME, Nov. 4), which broadcasts "the greatest works" of music, drama, poetry, and the best obtainable literary and scientific addresses "with no concession whatever to mass taste."

After nine months of steady bombardment by BBC's Third, how many Britons had been hit? Last week, TIME'S London Bureau reported:

"After some youthful statistical fidgets, the Third Program's audience has settled at about 900,000 a night. That's not a patch on the 'Home Service' and 'Light Program' audiences (which often reach 12,000,000 for one broadcast), but the BBC thinks it is quite a showing.

"The Third appeals most, as was expected, to the educated middle class. It is liked least by listeners from 16 to 19, most by those from 30 to 50. More men listen than women (by about a fifth); and the most faithful audience by far is in Wales, where every man worth his porridge is a bit of a poet or a musician.

"In one respect, the Third has it all over the other two services: its listeners are considerably better pleased with what they hear. Full-length broadcasts of drama and music are particularly favored, opera being the most popular of all. When Rossini's Barber of Seville was aired recently, the audience jumped to 1,800,000. But many less fetching topics win a surprisingly good hearing; that same week, for instance, the third most popular program, with 300,000 listeners, was a talk called 'The Anthropologist on Contemporary Problems.'"

But British listeners have not swallowed such heavy lumps of highbrow fare without some good-natured growling. Recently The New Statesman and Nation asked its readers to suggest some additions to the Third's oak-solid program log. A few of the leg-pulling "suggestions":

P: "T. S. Eliot will meditate in the studio. . . . No spoken accompaniment."

P: "Selections from Milton . . . rewritten . . . on the assumption that his amanuensis took down his writings incorrectly."

P: "Jungle noises. . . . Malay and English names of the insects . . . brief description of each."

P: "Padraig O'Conaire's short stones, read in Gaelic . . . and accompanied on the harp."

P: "Bimetallism ... the possible effects on Roman art, had the Etruscans been bimetallists."

"Introduction to p . . . [reading of] the complete series of figures ... to 20,000 decimal places."

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