RADIO LOG BOOK

Evening Star, Issue 23693, 28 September 1940, Page 4

RADIO LOG BOOK

Agitation is afoot in Australia to have a lower license fee for country listeners than for those in cities. There is logic in the proposal. City people have a wider range of programmes than dwellers outback. In New Zealand there is the same difference.

Improvement may now be expected in the quality of reception of the last rebroadcast of the English news bulletins. This improvement is seasonal, and should rule until next autumn.

Tn Ncw Zealand, 25s is paid as a listeners’ foe, as against 20s in Australia. It costs less than 15s a license to run the national radio service. An Australian Minister has confessed that the balance is to he regarded as an indirect form of taxation. Docs the same position obtain in New Zealand-'

About 1,000 radio plays arc submitted each year to the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Recently a competition was held, and 350 plays wore entered, but not one was a, comedy. Australian playwrights seem to bo serious folk.

Dr ( Joebbels must have control of the largest output of radio stations directed by one man. The transmitters in Germany, Austria. Czccho-Slovakia, Norway, Denmark. Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France are all under orders from Beilin. Possibly the N.B.C. and Columbia chains in America own more stations—N.B.C. has something like 100—but in wattage the Nazi chief would top the score.

The United States has determined to combat the totalitarian powers in the air. Licenses have been issued by the Federal Communications Commission for five additional 50,000-watts short wave transmitters; and the broadcasting combines have agreed to an expenditure of 2.000,000 dollars on more powerful plants. Special attention is to be naid to South America, which is persistently wooed by the Nazi propagandists (states the 1 Timaru Herald’),