ALTERNATIVE PROGRAMMES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 49, 31 May 1940, Page 12

ALTERNATIVE PROGRAMMES

The Editor, " The Listener." Sir-With every radio station in New Zealand attempting, separately, to please about 350,000 listeners whose every taste is different, it is not always possible to listen right through one programme without (1) going to sleep, (2) going to the dogs, (3) going berserk, or (4) going for the set with an axe. I am still waiting for something to happen to the suggestion advanced several times in your columns that the two or three stations in each centre should co-operate more closely to provide alternative programmes. However, if we must bear what we have until our shouts for something better penetrate the fastnesses of the State ear-drum, we can at least enjoy the element of surprise created in programmes which switch so indiscriminately from symphony orchestras to mandoline medleys. One of the surprises came to me the other day. It was the discovery of very definite entertainment possibilities in the feature "Tusitala, Teller of Tales." I heard the story of the workmen who were fitting a large piece of machinery into a prepared emplacement. A block of wood fell into a deep but narrow hole, and jammed. All efforts to get it out failed until an old-timer joggled it with a crow-bar, worked it loose, and floated it to the surface. This was-a simple enough plot for a story, but I'll wager that few listeners guessed how he would remove the piece of wood until the last few words of the broadcast. The whole interest was in the telling of the story. It was marred, I thought, by accents which not even American-mass-produced serials have yet been able to impose upon the New Zealanders’ speech; but as an item, in spite of that defect, it held the attention of one whose urge to destroy his radio set rises in geometrical progression, and is only stifled by the correlative advance in the cost of living. If there is anything new in radio that literature has not supplied it is the ability of spoken words to do things and play interesting tricks which visual perception has to forgo. These spoken short stories have something that is missed in writing, just as writing, of course, has something that is missed in broadcasting. But I suggest that this special advantage could be used to much greater effect. Station 3YA, I believe, is experimenting with short stories

written specially for radio. Was it not Jefferson Farjeon who wrote something they broadcast a month ago? With no imagination of a visible personality behind them, many of the NBS and CBS talks are poor dull things. Unless the speaker has that sort of radio personality which gets out through his voice, talks at their best are only interesting through their narrative value. Narrative value, added to the virtues of a good story-telling voice, put short stories far ahead in broadcasting entertainment value. I should like to hear O. Henry over the air, given by one speaker, with no frills or silly effects. And there are others. New Zealand writers at present wasting their time on the complications of radio plays might find themselves more adept at this simpler and so vastly more interesting medium. There is the suggestion. Will someone please do something about it? Yours. etc.,

Cave, South Canterbury,

E.W.

M.

May 20, 1940.