Are you planning a series of radio broadcasts? Perhaps you have already been "on the air" for some time and are a veteran of many religious "shows," as the industry insists on calling all broadcasts. By the way, did it ever occur to you to view your productions from the standpoint of the industry—as shows? You flinch at calling by such a name your earnest endeavors at winning souls to Christ. I know.
You have planned your series carefully. You have had suitable notices of it published to attract listeners. You have selected a good air time—after, of course, a thorough study of what constitutes a favorable time. You have studied how to tie in your radio work with your platform evangelism. You have enlisted the best musical talent you can get. You have planned a Bible school with printed lessons and offers of books and effective ways of getting names and addresses for follow-up work. You have adroitly scheduled your sermon subjects so as to build up a listening audience before you reveal your identity with certain unpopular views.
You are a thoroughgoing radio evangelist. But —how effective are you? How well are you "selling" your gospel stock in trade? Or, to revert to the somewhat odious term of the industry, how good a "show" are you putting on? Your sponsor must be satisfied. Your Hooper rating, indicating the proportionate number of listeners who tune in to your program, will scarcely answer the question satisfactorily. Your heavenly Sponsor wants you to reach a select audience and to reach the deep heart of that audience. He wants you on the air with a show of divine grace. How, in addition to the devices mentioned, do you propose to gain your objective?
We have not yet mentioned the one most important factor in your success on the air—the way you write and read your script. When listeners hear you read, they decide whether to listen to your program, or tune it out. That is, granting they have survived your opening music. What is the most effective way to write and read an evangelistic script? There are two principal styles—the auditorium style and the conversational style.
Auditorium Style
From the standpoint of radio production there is only one justification for using the auditorium style. That is the presence of a large studio audience which makes itself known to the listening audience by joining in the hymn singing, perhaps by saying "Amen," or by being generally noisy with coughing, sneezing, shuffling of feet. The perspective of listening is then that of the variety show and the concert, with the radio audience veritably "listening in" on something that is going on at headquarters. The object is usually entertainment.
Though statistics are not available, I suspect that a large percentage of the following enjoyed by certain religious broadcasts of this type is held by the entertainment motive. The listener gets emotional release by hearing the rolling bass of the hymn accompaniments, the shouted devil-baiting of the preacher, and the ecstatic responses of the audience. He differs from other listeners tuned in to the comedian only in the type of emotional stimulation which he allows to entertain him.
Auditorium delivery, with its high-volume level, its raised and sustained pitch, often approaching monotone, and its explosive, oratorical rhetoric, is obviously farcical when it originates in a dead studio. The listener says to himself, "What is the fellow ranting about ?" which might also be the response of thinking listeners to the "packed house" situation as well.
Right or wrong, the people of our generation are suspicious of spellbinding. They want facts. They want to decide for themselves, and they are not sure that the high-pressure evangelist is not trying to push them into something. There are obviously some people who can be pushed into anything, if the sales pressure is high enough. But we are interested in solid thinking people. We want converts who cannot be pushed out with as great ease as they were pushed in.
Conversational Style the Best
The conversational style is the logical style for the radio evangelist to adopt. It appeals to the rational mind. It is sincere, gripping. It will get a listening audience of the kind of people we want in our tabernacles and our churches.
Many a tent and tabernacle evangelist has faced a broadcast schedule completely at a loss as to how to achieve the informal delivery so essential to persuasion over the air. He wants to talk to the one-man audience. He wants to be friendly, personal. But as he starts to read his script, he at once finds himself preaching. He realizes it, but cannot stop. Next time is no better. He resigns himself to a modified auditorium style. What is he to do to break the pattern?
The trouble should be remedied at the beginning—at the typewriter. The script must be written like talking, not like preaching, or like reading. Seated across from you is an earnest chap who does not understand about the truths of the Bible. He may not even be interested in spiritual things, but he does have problems that are bothering him, and would like to have some help in solving them. He might listen to a preacher-man if approached properly. So you start to talk to him—with your typewriter. Mind you, he will desert you without a "by-your-leave," if you fail to interest him or to talk straight to him about his problem. So here you go—
"We live today in a war-weary world. [Beautiful, alliterative phrase, isn't it ? You can just hear yourself sonorously inflect that opening clause!] A world gone mad, a world torn by hate, by violence, by death. [How your voice will swing down with a sepulchral thud on that last word! How neatly you have grouped your thoughts in a series of three. You waste no time getting into the subject !]
"Death! How the word chills us, how it conjures up before us pictures of the battlefields of Flanders, whose poppies are once more crushed beneath the weight of your son or mine, falling nobly on the soil made holy by a former generation, who also fought for freedom. [You are tempted to quote a stanza of "In Flanders Field," but have become vaguely aware that the fellow across from you has around his mouth a strange smile, which he struggles to Control. But you go on.]
"Did you ever stop to wonder, friend of mine [Ah, yes, friend—you must have the personal touch], about that son, fallen on a cold, grim battleground, far from home, far from loved ones, far from the assurances that his young mind rested upon but a few months ago?"
You are just about to write your real introductory question, "Is that the end for him, or does some indestructible part of him go on to some other place?" when you notice that while you were intent upon your keys, the man across from you had slipped away, and no one is sitting there.
Why go on? If you were to read that over the air the man at the radio set would twirl his dial, for he would know you to be play-acting. You would never really talk to a man across the desk in those stilted, puffed-up sentences. So let us try again.
"Good evening, friend of radioland. [Watch the "tone of voice" with which you write. It must be matter-of-fact, friendly, level, conversational. Look straight into the eyes of the man across the desk as you write.] I have here in my hand a letter. It was handed to me just a few minutes ago by a friend of mine, a mother. It begins, 'We regret to inform you___________... ' You know how it goes on from there, to those choking words, 'missing in action.' A great many of those letters have been delivered in recent months. Maybe one has been delivered to you. But that mother was smiling through her tears when she handed me the letter. She said, 'Ray was a good boy. Whatever happens I know it will be all right with him.' Well, I knew Ray and I felt just the same way about it. Let me tell you why."
You finish the script in the same informal tone, looking up now and again to see how the fellow across the desk is taking it, to see the shine in his eye and the quiver around his mouth, as you talk about thoughts that lie close to the human heart.
When air time comes, you cannot help reading that script straight into the heart of each listener, because you see again the face of the man across the desk, you feel again the warmth of human contact, personal, individual. Your voice has a longing appeal in it, the "pathetic" quality spoken of by Mrs. E. G. White—pathetic because it carries your own personalized feeling for one individual who is as close to you all the time as that man who sat near you as you wrote.
What about the man sitting by his radio set? He is that same man we were talking about, and his face lights up in just the same way, and he follows you with the same sympathetic attention. He will not tune you out, if you are talking to him, just him alone. Your way of talking—the words you use and the voice you talk with—tells him of your deep interest in him.
In conclusion then, you achieve the conversational style of delivery by the simple (but, oh, how difficult) device of visualizing the one-man audience as you write and as you read.
