GOODWILL TOUR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1939, Page 6

GOODWILL TOUR

TRAVELLING BROADCASTING STATION OPERATION IN MASTERTON. OPENING BY THE MAYOR. A travelling broadcasting station, fitted up in a carriage, will be in operation in Masterton during the next few days. It is known as SZB and is on the .concluding stages of a tour that embraced the greater part of the North Island. The station will open its broadcast tomorrow evening at 6 o’clock, when the Mayor, Mr T. Jordan and Mr J. Robertson, M.R., will broadcast. The station director is Mr lan Mackay, who conducts the Slaps and Claps session from 2ZB; the advance manager is Mr D. Laurenson, whose headquarters are at IZB Auckland and the technician is Mr David Joseph, who has just returned from two years overseas. during which period be conducted his own station in Scotland. The actual times of broadcasts in Masterton are: — Saturday: 6 p.m. to midnight. Sunday: Noon to 2 p.m.; 6 to 10 p.m. Monday and Tuesday: 7 to 9 a.m.; noon to 2 p.m.; 6 to 10 p.m. Wednesday; 7 to 9 a.m.; noon to 2 p.m. “It is definitely a goodwill tour, run with the idea of giving first-class reception and interesting samples of commercial broadcasting programmes to towns that normally do not get ZB stations throughout the day,” said Mr Laurenson. Masterton, he said, was originally intended to be the first town to be visited on the tour. The reason for the change was that by commencing at Rotorua during Easter the station was able to operate there during the period of influx of holidaymakers and thus reach people coming from all parts of New Zealand. On account of this rearrangement Mfasterton was now the last town of the tour. During the tour, the station had travelled about 2000 miles and at a conservative estimate over half a million people had listened to the station’s programmes. The towns visited were Rotorua, where the tour commenced on April 5, Hamilton, Whangarei, Te Kuiti, Taumarunui. New Plymouth. Hawera, Wanganui, Palmerston North, Dannevirke, Napier, Hastings and Masterton.

The most interesting feature, said Mr Laurenson, had been the tremendous coverage achieved by a station of such low power. The station, he said, was rated as being of 250 watts, which was equivalent to only a quarter of the heat of the ordinary household heater. In spite 4 of that, when the station was broadcasting from Rotorua it was picked up in Invercargill and Whangarei and last week, when broadcasting from Wanganui, it was heard in Queensland. The station was broadcasting on a wave length of 13.60 kilocycles. Some sets might not be marked in kilocycles and broadly speaking the station would be picked up either at one end of the dial or the other, according to the numbering, or broadly speaking, between 4ZB Dunedin and 2ZA Palmerston North. As far as local residents were concerned, they would have no difficulty whatever in picking up the station when it broadcasted.* Anyone living within two or three miles of the station would be well advised to disconnect the aerials, as they would then be able to bring up the volume to any pitch they liked. Mr Laurenson said the tour was proving of considerable value for research purposes, as careful records were being kept and collated of the reception from different locations. As the result of the appeal made by the station for information regarding reception from 80 to 100 letters were being received daily. As a result of the tour it had been determined that although Rotorua was a notoriously bad place to broadcast into, it was an excellent place to broadcast from. From the records obtained it had been possible to accumulate data indicating zones of silence, bad reception or good reception. One of the most dramatic events of the tour occurred at Rotorua, where, on Good Friday, at 11.55 a.m. a call was received from the superintendent of the Rotorua Hospital asking the station to broadcast a message to the parents of a small boy who had met with an accident. The parents resided at Mokai, 40 or 50 miles away and the accident happened on the one day or the year in which tnere was no telephone connection between Rotorua and Mokai. At eight minutes past noon the radio call was put over. _ The parents happened to be listening in and a few minutes later were on their way to Rotorua by car. r The carriage in which the station is set up was not specially designed for broadcasting purposes. It was a coach that was not in use and by a minimum amount of alteration was fitted out for broadcasting. As far as is known, the station will be dismantled when it re turns.to Wellington.