Theatre of the air

Imagine you are listening to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra coming through very beautifully on your in flight entertainment headset* possible if you are travelling on a BOAC 747 or on certain 707 services.

Seven audio programmes—three stereo and four mono —are specially produced for BOAC by EMI, one of the world’s largest recording groups with links with Capitol Records in the United States and other com panies around the world. The result is that it has access to a treasure-house of recorded sound and great attention has been paid to the quality of programme reproduction.

Top personalities introduce and link together the programmes at special recording sessions. The pro grammes are changed four times a year. Details of more than 100 different items on the seven channels can be obtained from the audio entertainment programmes pro vided. Michael Flanders, for example, may be intro ducing the Spoken Word channel, Pete Murray the Pop channel, Steve Race the Ballet and Opera.

Why the special quality of sound? Hubert Hughes, EMI executive, explains: “We decided we would not take the easy way, dubbing the records on tape. For the BOAC tapes we went right back to the original studio recordings, a much more expensive process, but much better from the passengers’ point of view.”

It is this closeness to the original sound which leads Sonia Higgins, EMl’s executive producer for the pro grammes, to comment; “The quality of BOAC audio entertainment is exceptional among the world’s airlines.”

In addition to the ten hours of audio entertainment —three two-hour stereo channels and four one-hour mono channels—there are also inflight films on the routes where audio is available.

Aircraft routes from London on which films can be seen are divided into four groups: to New York and Miami; to Canada, Chicago and Detroit; to India, Hong Kong and Australia; and to South Africa and the Polar and Siberian routes to Japan. The films in each group are changed every month. From August there will be a fifth group covering Caribbean services.

Among the films being shown during mid-1972 are “The Boy Friend” with Twiggy, “Big Jake” with John Wayne, “Mary, Queen of Scots” with Vanessa Redgrave, Glenda Jackson, and Patrick McGoohan, and “Catch Me A Spy” with Kirk Douglas and Trevor Howard.

Passengers wishing to know if there is a film on their flight, and if so which one, can ring BOAC reservations. of international regulations a charge of $2.50 is made for the use of the headset.

Pete Murray recording a tape for a BOAC programme.

Glenda Jackson, Trevor Howard in “Mary Queen of Scots”.