The least possibility

Posted by Shae on June 02, 2003

In Reply to: The least possibility posted by R.Berg on June 01, 2003

: : : : : Hi,

: : : : : I am not quite understand the bracketed phrases. Could anyone do me a favor?

: : : : : Television newsreels will, of course, continue to develop and be of the greatest interest and attraction, but (there is surely not the least possibility that they will ever replace the news on sound.)

: : : : : Thanks a lot.

: : : : "not the least possibility" = there's no chance. It's not going to happen.

: : : : But I don't understand what "replace the news on sound" means.

: : : Maybe it means the sound quality in newsreels is poor.

: : It may mean that although the pictures accompanying the news are more important, they cannot take the place of the spoken reports.

: The sentence is badly written. Here you have three native speakers of English (I think we are all native speakers) trying to figure it out, and not one is sure what it means.

I suspect the extract was written during the late 1950s when television was starting to compete with radio as a source of news. At the time, the quality of radio sound was superior to that of black and white TV 'newsreels' which were recorded on rolls of film (16mm?) and had a scratchy soundtrack.