B RADIO STATIONS

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 449, 3 June 1937, Page 2

B RADIO STATIONS

FUTURE DISCUSSED AT DUNEDIN Lively Meeting Of Listeners Press Association —Copyright. Dunedin, June 2. A lively and frequently amusing meeting of radio listeners filled the concert chamber of the town hall last night when representatives of B stations and local organisations that have used or benefited by such stations presented a case for private enterprise in broadcasting and endeavoured to show why the Government should be urged to redeem its pre-election promises and either buy out or subsidise local broadcasting units. The Mayor, the Rev. E. T. Cox, who convened the meeting, was in the chair and rather took the wind out of everyone’s sails by opening the proceedings with a recital of the Government's intentions received by him that afternoon from the actingPrime Minister, the Hon. P. Fraser. He stated that the Government was prepared to allow station 4ZB to remain on the air, to buy out those wishing to sell and to subsidise such stations as might be considered essential. The case for the B stations was volubly put in the first instance by Mr Harold Booth, of the Radio Listeners’ League, who was followed by the Rev. L. B. Neale, the Rev. A. C. Standage (representing the broadcasting committee of the Presbyterian Church Mr J. Roberts (Mayor of Cromwell), and Mr W. J. Bardsley, but the issue did not go unchallenged. Several more or less incoherent speakers and a host of interjectors were inclined to suggest that the meeting had been convened in the interests of the proprietors. of the B stations and the Hon. M. Connelly, M.L.C. and Dr, D. G. McMillan, M.P., took up the cudgels very determinedly on the part of the Government. The result was a hectic round of heckling and interjection with several sharpreprimands from the chair before the meeting carried, by no means unanimously, the fallowing resolution:

"That this meeting of citizens of Dunedin views with "the gravest concern a suggestion that the local B station may be forced to close dow» as a result of the Government’s policy and calls on the Government to carry out its pledges to these stations in their entirety and that, further, the Government be requested to take a plebiscite of listeners on the retention or otherwise of B stations and that in the event of the vote going for retention the Government be asked whether such stations are to be maintained by revenue from advertising or by means of an adequate subsidy.” It was stated by Mr Booth that an application had been made for permission to broadcast the meeting bnit it was refused by the Minister.