On April 18, 1930, at the BBC headquarters, the journalist on duty for the 8.45pm radio newspaper took the line to say only: “There is no news today, let’s play some music”; And connected with Queen’s Hall in Langham Place, London, where the performance of Wagner’s Parsifal was in progress. There is no news, let’s hear some music. It was a sensational and incredible innovation.
To the point that many years later a prestigious American fact-checking site has decided to verify itbelieving it was just one of the many hoaxes that run on the Web. But he had to give up, discovering that the source of the news was the BBC website, which reports it as an example of an era in which news was slow, they did not chase us, they did not yank us in search of our attention at the cost of exaggerating. The news, whether on TV, radio or newspapers, must fill spaces, no matter what happened. The result is that when nothing important happens, we make things that aren’t important, or serious, or urgent; while when something serious is underway, such as a pandemic or a war, nothing else gets attention because there is no space.
But that April 18, 1930, the BBC reporter didn’t have to invent a hot or cold warning or a black dot on the roads, or even delving into the morbid details of any crime. But he did something even revolutionary: he gave us back our time, proposing rather to listen to good music.
We talk about it today it’s not because that was the first time but because it was the only one. She evidently she did not go very well. But maybe we still have time.