It's Your Life

Commercial Broadcasting is all about attracting listeners. Profit for the broadcaster depended upon attracting sponsors, and more listeners meant more ears hearing the sponsor's message. However, as part of the licensing agreement with the Federal Communications Commission, broadcasters are expected to act, at least part of the time, "in the public interest".

Public Interest programming is often relegated to "graveyard" timeslots and produced as inexpensively as possible. This makes sense from the perspective of a commercial broadcaster but does not always have to be the rule.

Johnson and Johnson sponsored It's Your Life on WMAQ Chicago in 1949 was a notable exception. Created in cooperation with the Chicago Industrial Health Organization, the program turned to an innovative production technique to present heart-warming and relevant stories. That technique was the use of magnetic tape recording.

Presented as a health-related documentary series, the use of magnetic tape afforded producer Ben Park to explore some interesting storytelling techniques with It's Your Life. Because the majority of radio content was broadcast live, shows had to be tightly scripted to work over network air. By using live, unscripted interviews and sound clips recorded on magnetic tape, Park and his writers could present stories with unprecedented realism.

The field of public health provides more than its share of compelling stories. Heartstrings were understandably tugged by tales of cancer scares, childhood deafness and disability, the state of emergency care, tuberculosis, mental health treatment, veteran's issues, and many other topics.

Park would send his field reporters to record various people and procedures. The tapes would be used as story elements to illustrate the episode's message, and because the material was already "in the can" the taped content could be edited to the best effect.

Magnetic tape technology was developed in Germany between the World Wars. It would be a direct replacement for the gramophone technology which had been used for electronic transcription. Gramophone recording allowed sound waves to carve a groove into a rotating disk. The impressions in the cut groove allowed for the sound to be reproduced with incredible clarity. The disk itself was prohibitively fragile and the process was cumbersome. Tape was not as long-lasting as a well-cared-for disk, but recordings were quick and simple to make.

Although the radio version of It's Your Life was a showcase for new technology, the show was doomed by technological progress. After 27 radio episodes, producer Ben Park was enticed to apply his talents to a television public health program.

See also:  Vox Pop