WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 67, 4 October 1940, Page 14

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR?

Sir,-Many times in the course of a not very short life have I felt the urge to pick up my pen and rush into print. Until this occasion, however, my natural (or is it unnatural?) indolence has always won the day. But now it really is a case of "Up Guards, and at ’em!" Why, may I ask, have you cut out that most valuable feature of your paper: "What Would You Like To Hear?" I was not a subscriber to The Listener until I chanced a few months ago to pick up a copy and glance through it. I was immediately struck by this very fine feature and at once placed an order for the regular delivery of the paper. Now I find myself left lamenting a subscription paid in advance. Should any retrenchment of space be necessary-and we all realise such is the case at present-surely this should be effected from among the extraneous matter published? Your paper apparently aims at being all things to all men. Is this not a thought ambitious for a threepenny journal which is bought primarily-and usually, I should imagine, finally-as a Radio Programme? It is of no interest to me to see therein a full-page article I have already read in the daily paper, cookery recipes which have strayed from their natural habitat and similarly unrelated matter which assuredly passes into oblivion, " unwept, unhonoured and unsung." But what I should much like to see, re-in-stated, is WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR? -ROUSED AT LAST (Blenheim). (What Would You Like to Hear? was a good feature before the war, when programmes were stable. It was a permissable feature after the war started until rint rationing began. It would still be a j ble feature if it could be kept reasonably full and reasonably accurate. But programmes at present change from day to day, and with every change those two pages have either to be pulled to pieces again and remade or remain incomplete and misleading. We can’t afford the time, or the cost, of fr i them, and would sooner disappoint some readers than mislead all of them. We shall restore the feature as soon as circumstances permit. Would our correspondent in the meantime please let us know ‘which of our fullpage articles she has already seen in the y papers.-Ed.)