ABSTRACT
Wireless*, as early as 1930 voices inside the BBC were to be heard expressing their unease at their lack of infonnation about listeners and their reactions to programmes. In that year Val Gielgud, Director of Drama, was writing, ' ... it must be of considerable disquiet to many people beside myself to think that it is quite possible that a very great deal of our money and time and effort may be expended on broadcasting into a void'. Sporadic social surveys in the field were conducted abroad and were being collated by the BBG's Director of Foreign Relations, Major C. F. Atkinson who, with the backing of another powerful figure in the BBC, Charles Siepmann, pressed for systematic inquiry in Britain. However, such ideas were dismissed as utopian both by some of those who favoured them in principle and by others who openly declared them dangerous. But the climate which had been unpropitious was changing, and when Tallents took up his post he found the subject had been placed finnly on his agenda.
