Early Radio Training

Waco Times-Herald
October 13, 1935

Untrodden Field is Being Explored by Baylor Class

Few Textbooks on Radio Speaking, So Paul Baker and His Students Go on Their Own

With only 10 or 20 books so far written in the United States on radio, Paul Baker and his radio speech class of 22 at Baylor university are having to make their rules as they proceed on what to do to be a radio success.

"Some of the people who are having radio careers now know what they're doing and why they please audiences," says Baker, "but most of them don't. The general rule is, try out and if you have a good speaking voice, go on with your career. If you don't, stop. We want to find out what makes pleasing voices, how to train them, and what to do after we get them."

Consequently, he is having all 22 students write skits, chiefly concerned with the humor, drama and sweep of college life and these are presented in the old Baylor chapel -- the one practically forgotten on the third floor of the main building, one of the cupolaed oldest buildings on the campus. Until a few years ago, this auditorium -- once large enough to accommodate the entire student body, now scarcely able to hold a fraction of it -- had old-fashioned mottoes in Latin painted on the walls, gravely informing students that "dulce et decorum est mori pro patria" and reminding them that Baylor was "pro eccesia, pro Texana."

Baker had a decorator from New York suggest plans for refinishing the auditorium. The class furnishes its own performers, skits, audience and critics in programs broadcast no further than the auditorium now, but later will broadcast by remote control from station WACO.