RADIO

They Know What They Want

Victor Ratner, for one, is sick & tired of hearing critics pick on radio. "Radio's made in the image of the American people," says he. "To lambaste it is--why, it's un-American!"

Veteran Radioman Ratner, 43, is in a good spot to hit back at radio's detractors: he is the new CBS vice president in charge of promotion and advertising. He is a veteran scrapper (as a University of Michigan freshman, he once outwrestled Ed "Don" George, who became a topflight U.S. heavyweight).

"The critics hit at radio," says Ratner, "because they claim to be shocked at the programs; actually they're shocked at what the U.S. people are. Radio fits the contours of the people. The masses like comic books, Betty Grable in the movies, broad comedy and simple drama on the air. It's vulgar, fast, simple, fundamental --and that's what art is.

"Critics of radio often speak of 'The People's Air.' Yet they seem to refuse to face the facts about 'The People's Taste.' Such criticisms are really criticisms of the American educational system for not raising the 'cultural level' of Americans, for not getting them interested in 'the better things' when they are young. Radio then gets the blame for this failure."

Since radio, in Ratner's opinion, represents "the judgment of the majority of adult Americans," it must be right. The intellectuals who object to soap opera had better go read a book and leave radio to the masses.

Ratner has no formula for pleasing both "classes and masses," other than to "take the serious stuff and put it into mass language." But radio is gradually closing the gap anyway, he believes: "The professor is discovering Jack Benny and the ditch digger is discovering symphony at the same time. Radio gets into people's houses and cross-fertilization begins."

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