Radio: Atom with a Cherry on Top

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When radio feels that it has something important to say, it usually tries to say it in hour-long "documentaries." Usually, nobody listens. Pondering this depressing fact, Mutual's Elsie Dick, director of educational programs, determined to "close the gap between what the public likes and what the public needs."

Last week Mutual offered Split the Atom, the first of a series of tinsel-wrapped, icing-covered educational programs. Plugged as a giveaway show, advertised with titillating copy ("Is it serious? Or just plain delirious? You'll be frightened . . . and enlightened. You'll laugh . . . and you'll learn"), and presented before a typical studio audience of 900 people, Split the Atom was even endowed with a sponsor ("Nature, spelled NATURE, world's greatest manufacturer of energy").

The first contestant, failing to explain what "atom" meant in the original Greek, was penalized with a harmless jolt from a

Van de Graaff generator; a second contestant was given a Geiger counter, asked to search the audience for a radioactive $100 bill; a third, trying to choose between two star sapphires—a natural stone ($5,000) and one made by scientists ($250)—picked the cheaper stone.

Mutual's razzle-dazzle approach to a solemn subject brought mixed reactions. Throughout the show the audience giggled appreciatively. In Massachusetts, vacationing Sir Arthur Salter (TIME, Sept. 20) said thoughtfully: "In England we had a series of talks on atomic energy . . . but without any . . . music, applause, and the impersonation of isotopes to hold the flagging attention."

But jubilant Elsie Dick, reporting a flood of 1,152 letters in response to the first program, went busily ahead with plans for this week's lesson on the atom— a mystery show entitled The Case of the Tick-Tock Murder, starring Cinemactor Turhan Bey.