Volume 35, No. 4
Fall 2018
Cynthia B. Meyers is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. In an interview with Editorial Assistant Ashley Walter, she discusses her research for the article and The March of Time.
How did you become interested in The March of Time?
Although I had heard of the filmed newsreel, which lasted until 1951, I did not know much about the radio program that preceded it until I discovered in the private records of BBDO that the ad agency had been the producer of the radio program. Having already written a book about ad agencies as program producers on 1930s-40s radio, I was intrigued to learn that the ad agency was not just involved in pure entertainment programming but was also an innovator in early broadcast journalism.
You note that you were given access to some, but not all, of the records in 2014. What hurdles did you face in gaining access to this archive?
The BBDO archive was private and held in a warehouse in New Jersey. When I learned that it still existed and had not been destroyed and spoke to the BBDO librarian, she suggested I speak to the retired CEO, who then allowed me access under her supervision. I spent several months of a sabbatical sitting on the floor of her cubicle looking through boxes. The boxes were not organized so every day was a surprise. I was not able to see all the boxes before the librarian retired but I am hopeful that someday these materials will be deposited in an archive so that other scholars can see them.
The quote you included from John Martin that instructed the Time staff to be “weekly historians, not just journalists” is fascinating. Do you see The March of Time as fitting into this mission, or complicating it?
The March of Time definitely fits into this mission. Each broadcast was designed as a sort of highlight reel of the week’s events, just like the weekly Time magazine. As one of their promotions claimed, “There is one publication which watches, analyzes and every seven days reports the march of human history on all its fronts. It is the weekly newsmagazine–Time.”
I also see quite a bit of overlap in Henry Luce’s approach to journalism and how the leaders of BBDO, such as Bruce Barton, approached advertising. Both Luce and the BBDO executives believed their mission was to educate the middle classes. Because Time was essentially a news aggregator, Luce justified their aggregation choices by claiming Time was selecting and highlighting the most important stories, the stories that would have historical value in the future, hence the claim they were “historians” for the week. This parallels BBDO’s approach to advertising, which was to educate the public about the value of advertised goods and to provide a form of “cultural uplift” for radio audiences. While the editors at Time claimed to be selecting the most significant stories for the radio program, the ad agency BBDO provided the entertainment strategies such as drama and music. Those entertainment strategies were perhaps like the “sugar” to make the “medicine” of information go down.
You discussed that most of the dialogue was “often pure invention.” In addition to the 1938 torpedoed ship example, are there any other scripts that showcased the dramatic nature of the show?
Even though BBDO claimed that much dialogue was copied word-for-word from actual utterances, such as speeches, it is obvious that the dialogue in many scenes is entirely or partially fictionalized. They claimed they were inventing dialogue that was consistent with the facts. This may also reflect evolving journalistic standards too—how often were newsmakers accurately quoted in news accounts at the time?
There are scripts and portions of scripts available in several books that give a reader a clear sense of the dramatic strategies. Examples of March of Time scripts can be found in Max Wylie, Best Broadcasts of 1938–39, 141–154; Katharine Seymour and John Martin, Practical Radio Writing, 132–139; Robert Elson Time Inc., 178; and Paul W. White, News on the Air, 256ff.
However, I do strongly recommend listening to the few broadcasts that are available on the Internet Archive: the sonic layering of dialogue, music, and sound effects is just extraordinary, especially when you realize it was performed live on the air with no editing. I have posted a 90 second clip here:
http://mediacommons.org/imr/2018/05/25/radio-docudrama-march-time-1931-45
You wrote that news programming expanded during World War II. Did the war play a significant role in The March of Time’s stories?
The radio program went on hiatus from 1939, around the time war broke out in Europe, until just before the US entered the war in 1941. When it returned in 1941 it was under the production oversight of a different ad agency, Young & Rubicam, and its format was changed to include more actual journalists reporting and fewer re-enactments. The program went off the air at the end of the war, in part because broadcast journalism was evolving away from re-enactments by actors and toward actuality sound—as Edward R. Murrow’s famous broadcasts of the bombings of London demonstrated. Broadcasters learned from audience interest in war coverage that news was an important genre to develop and it was not long before broadcast news became a profit center rather than a loss leader.
How do you see The March of Time as relevant to today’s media?
The March of Time was produced when audio recordings of actual events (actuality recordings) were rare and difficult to create. So the program’s fictionalization of actual events was seen by many as a legitimate way to convey the importance of those events. The dramatic strategies were understood not as “fake news” but as a strategy for engaging audiences who might not otherwise read print publications.
Although fictionalizing and re-enacting news events is no longer considered a legitimate journalistic approach, it is still an important strategy. From documentary films to true crime series, fictionalized and dramatized versions of actual events proliferate in part because many audiences are attracted to the dramatic and want to feel as if they can “witness” events. While today we may be more concerned with the pitfalls of dramatic re-enactments, such as the potential for disinformation and the problems of verification, we can look back at The March of Time as evidence that dramatizing the news to attract audiences has a long and interesting history.