Can Such Things Be?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 4, 21 July 1939, Page 12

Can Such Things Be?

VERYBODY knows that television is coming, but nobody knows when it will be here. It is still far enough away from the average home to appear unreal, and the forecast on another page of its likely course in America still leaves us unmoved in New Zealand. We can’t think in millions where entertainment is concerned, and even if we could we should not be able to get excited about a miracle beyond our range of experience. We in fact hardly believe yet that what we read is true; and we are not sure that we wish it to be true. If there were nothing worse involved than the scrapping or remaking of our receiving sets we could take refuge in the thought that loss is never absolute. But if we may believe the prophets, television will remake our minds as well as our sets. As marine creatures become terrestrial after a few million jaunts ashore, we shall develop look-and-say brains by face-to-face acquaintance with the world’s wonders. It will in fact be simpler than that. The fish has to flounder out of the mud. We shall not have to move out of our chairs. It is all very disturbing till we remember that television in twenty years has moved less than fifty miles. It is coming, but if its next fifty miles are as long and as costly as its first fifty, some of us will dié without it. or we must suppose that a million dollars is a million dollars even in the United States, and if it would cost a hundred million dollars merely to link up sight stations from the Atlantic to the Pacific, co-axial contact between Auckland and Bluff will be a worry for our grandchildren. There will be no need for a year or two te burn our books, but politicians with a forward look should begin cultivating photogenic personalities.