BRIGHTER WIRELESS ERA

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 296, 6 March 1928, Page 1

BRIGHTER WIRELESS ERA

RESTRICTION REMOVED BERNARD SHAW’S QUIP By Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright. Reed. 12.30 p.m. LONDON, Monday. The Prime Minister, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, in answer to a question in the House of Commons, said that the Government had decided forthwith to remove the condition under which the British Broadcasting Corporation was prohibited from broadcasting statements involving subjects of political, religious and industrial controversy. The Government had asked the Corporation to use its discretion in utilising the power thus experimentally entrusted to it. The removal of the controversy ban on the British Broadcasting Corporation finds everybody delighted. It is regarded as the biggest change in the history of broadcasting in England. Keen discussions have been aroused of late regarding the frequency with which it has been announced at the eleventh hour that broadcasts were to be cancelled, either through the British Broadcasting Corporation objecting to the views about to be expressed, or speakers refusing to be officially shackled. The strongest critics have been Mr. Winston Churchill, Lord Birkenhead, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. Mr. G. B. Shaw and Mr. Lloyd George. Mr. Winston Churchill had declared that it was absolutely idiotic, because controversy was the soul of British life. Mr. G. B. Shaw, who has not lost a single opportunity of a tilt at the Broadcasting Company since it banned his speech on his 70th birthday, says: “Mr. Baldwin, with the general election in the offing, pretends to discover what I found out. Every time I spoke I was controversial, hoping that the Postmaster General would send a brigade of Guards to stop me.” The decision, it is suggested, will usher in a brighter wireless era in England.—A. and N.Z.