What Listeners Want

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 5, 28 July 1939, Page 12

What Listeners Want

No politician looks in his mail-bag for public opinion. The more letters he receives the more conscious he is of those he never receives. He represents, and knows that he Tepresents, people whom an earthquake would not make articulate. For precisely the same reason we do not suppose or wish to suggest that the competition we have just conducted proves anything about broadcasting. It does not even prove anything about programmes. If we had been foolish enough to expect such a result we should not be able, in the face of the seven winning answers printed on this page, to pretend that we had achieved it. Two of the seven vote for news, one for classical music, and one for dinner music, one for Parliament, one for children’s voices, and one for a serial. And if the seven winners express as many opinions as this, it is not necessary to add that there is the same diversity among the hundreds of losers- not to mention the tens of thousands who say nothing at all. Some are more skilful than others in expressing themselves, some more vehement, but the only opinion running like a thread through the whole series of answers is one that very few consciously intended. It is certainly one for which we did not ask. But it is plainly there. Listeners may not know what they want, and they may refuse to be happy till they get it. But they do know, and they have said, one or two directly, nearly all indirectly, that they want broadcasting. It has been impressive, and touching, to hear so many people saying in so many different ways that their receiving sets are spiritual meat and drink to them, church, school, and playground.