YOU CAN TALK TOO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 7, 11 August 1939, Page 41

YOU CAN TALK TOO

Giving Listeners The Air

ELLINGTON is at present \X the home of three experiments in giving listeners the air. Station 2YA is asking doctors and policemen and _ fishmongers, and people from every other trade or profession to arrange the programmes they like for broadcast; Station 2YD has been broadcasting 15 minute programmes compiled by listenercorrespondents for over a year, and for the last six months or so 2ZB has been taking the idea out of the studios and placing a microphone at the disposal of anybody who feels inclined to make use of it. "TI should like to hear you suffering, too," said Michael Standing,

organiser of the BBC "Standing on the Corner" feature, in a recent letter to H. Gladstone Hill, who the 3 a 2ZB microphone round concourse of Wellington Raileat Station at 12.30 mid-day every Tuesday for the "Wellington Speaks" session. Of all the jobs that come the way of a radio announcer this must be the most difficult. First he has to interest people in the microphone, then persuade them to come up and talk, see that they talk interestingly, and all the time make sure that no libel, blasphemy, or other sensation, gets on the air, by accident or intention. The general idea is that ordinary people passing by should be given the opportunity to air their views. People love doing it, but hate starting. Some remain confused once they are started, and some are just the reverse-hard to stop. The announcer needs an unusually quick wit, an engaging personality, and the diplomatic ability of a Foreign Office veteran.

In Wellington the feature has been going on the air every week for a little more than six months, and on each of those days Mr. Hill confesses he has been "not worth a tin of fish" for an hour before and after. He has to talk not only to listeners in their homes but also to the people whose curiosity brings them round his stand-two very different jobs. When he has finally persuaded the self-conscious man in the street to come up and do the talking he-usually has to keep him going with a round of leading questions, steering him into interesting subjects and off the rocks of dangerous comment.

If they do not come to the microphone he takes it to them. Some shrink away from it, others crowd around it. At. one session. a bystander pushed up to the microphone and started making vindictive personal comments. The microphone was snatched away from her only just in time. Mr, Hill’s experience is not confined to microphone work. Ordinary public speaking and public appearances are part of the common round for him, and:he is therefore not too disconcerted by the crowd which invariably assembles. But he is in no way sheltered by’ the. precise and time tabled atmosphere of a studio. The strain comes through trying to anticipate any of the hundred and one possibilities in that crowd, making sure that whatever gets into the microphone is topical and interesting and yet not likely to embarrass himself or his Station.