Humble beginnings

Alistair Cooke discussed the birth of Letter from America as well as some of the highs of a long and distinguished career in the following extracts from an address to the Royal Television Society in New York in 1997.

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How it all began (1946)

The head man said, "why don't you talk about the things you talk to me about? American children, the chemistry of the New England fall, out west, anything?" I said, " well, it opens quite a field." He said, "well, we'll set you up for thirteen weeks, and if it's a wild success another thirteen weeks.

But we're bankrupt, the Treasury has banned all export of sterling - to a certain amount - so even if you're the biggest thing that ever happened at the end of 26 weeks . . . no more." It was called Letter from America, and of course what I coyly say now is "somehow they forgot," because it's now in its 52nd year.

A new style of broadcasting

This led, during that time, to my developing, I think, a personal style and making it a talking style. During the end of the war, the BBC in New York invited various famous exiles, Frenchmen mostly, to come and talk to the underground in France; famous, famous, great literary men. And I had the privilege of sitting in the control room, and I thought that I will learn about broadcasting from listening to these men. These great . . . men.

What I learned is that they were dreadful broadcasters. They wrote essays, or lectures, or sermons and they read them aloud. And I suddenly realised there was a new profession ahead. Which is writing for talking. Putting it on the page in the syntactical break-up and normal confusion that is normal talk.

Doing battles with the BBC producers

All I can remember from those early years of broadcasting was the routine that the BBC talks producers had.

You delivered your script the day before. You went over it in the afternoon, and they went over it like a pedantic headmaster or parson. Line by line. "Do you mean blessed are the meek, or blessed ARE the meek." And so on.

This is extremely tedious, and then you performed. But they stayed with their slogan which was their prescription for how to broadcast.

They said, "first you must say what you are going to talk about, secondly you must talk about it, and then you must say what you talked about."

A prescription for a non-broadcast if ever there was such a thing. Because I discovered very early on that broadcasting is the control of suspense.

No matter what you're talking about - gardening, economics, murder - you're telling a story. Every sentence should lead to the next sentence. If you say a dull sentence people have a right to switch off.

A 'word of advice'

I soon faced the producers and stopped delivering my script. I said, "don't you think if it's a talk you should listen to it as a talk, the audience does not see a script."

This was a totally new idea to them. I went along and apparently it worked.

The only other thing I remember from those years ... a wise old talks producer came to me and said, "Cooke, a word in your ear. Could I give you a bit of advice?" I said, "of course." He said, "don't get too popular . . . or they'll drop you." Well, I've been working on that for 51 years!

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These extracts were taken from Alistair Cooke's address to the Royal Television Society in New York in 1997.