Aftermath

How seriously did the public take the Battle? It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say at this remove. Certainly, there was more interest in large cities, if only because not everybody in outlying areas had to choose which program to hear. Variety published a list of cities with CBS stations, but no NBC affiliate, and on the same page a list of cities with NBC outlets, but without a CBS station. NBC did not broadcast in Austin, Texas or Green Bay, Wisconsin or Mobile, Alabama; in all forty-three radio markets could hear the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle that could not near the NBC broadcasts. CBS did not broadcast in Albuquerque, New Mexico or Boise, Idaho or Jackson, Mississippi; in all forty-six markets could hear Streamlined Shakespeare that could not hear the CBS broadcasts. The producers and actors at the Oregon Shakespearean Festival, then in its third year, heard neither show. The only radio station in that part of Southern Oregon, KMED, was unaffiliated, carrying neither CBS nor NBC programming. KMED became a long time NBC affiliate on September 15, but the Battle of the Bard ended in August, so both programs completely bypassed one of the two Shakespeare festivals in the United States at that time. It was a different matter for cities with both networks.

William A. Brady, who played Claudius for Columbia, was quoted in the New York Times as saying he missed the common use of Shakespearean phrases by the American people that he heard growing up in New York's Bowery, and was confident that these broadcasts would restore phrases such as “Lay on, Macduff” and “To be, or not to be” as idioms. Since these phrases are common idioms today, though the garbled “Lead on, Macduff” is what we actually hear, it may be tempting to claim that these shows gave Brady his wish, but I doubt that they did. Brady's sampling is too anecdotal to be meaningful, and so is mine. I have been unable to find an article that studies the proliferation of Shakespearean phrases after these broadcasts and doubt that one was written. The same newspaper article posted the question, “Is Shakespeare too highbrow for radio?” It is a good question.