'A short while after came the pro-; gramme for grown-ups,—"news, with details of the Lausanne Conference, exchange rates, meteorological conditions, etc., and then a remarkably good vocal and instrumental concert. "Miss Ivy Phillips will now sing 'Sappho's Farewell' by Gounod," and then, that lady having sung, "That was Miss Ivy Phillips singing 'Sappho's Farewell,' "—this is how the announcements are made and in the case of an opera a short synopsis of the play is given beforehand.
Wireless concerts are not all "performed" at Marconi House of course. For a whole fortnight, as readers of the "North-China Daily News" must have learned, the "Magic Flute" and other Covent Garden operas were broadcasted ordinary firesides, and many thousands of listeners-in in Scandi. navia, Spain, France, Belgium and England itself had the joy of hearing Melba under these conditions,—not only could they hear kev but they could hear the applause as well. The same applies to the news bulletin. There is a man in a remote part-of the Shetland Isles I am told who gets the latest news every night in this way, whereas his newspapers when they arrive are a fortnight' old. As time goes on there will be few concert or lecture-halls without a microphone or two and already there is a talk of including Parliamentary debates and sermons of well-known church-men in the day's program-
The licensing of broadcasting stations-in Great Britain is in the hands of the Postmaster-General, and up to the present only -eight of these have been sanctioned, in n, Plymouth, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. A simple Marconiphone set can be _obtained for some £6 or so and it is amazing how popular they are becoming; even in comparatively poor districts in London it is no uncommon sight to see an aerial affixed to a house-roof, and the concerts form one of the chief topics of conversation everywhere.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.