PROGRAMMES AND ANNOUNCERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 68, 11 October 1940, Page 16

PROGRAMMES AND ANNOUNCERS

Sir,-The main New Zealand stations broadcast an amazing amount of popular dance music, not only on Saturday nights. When classics are featured, this is done at rare intervals; 4YA and 2YA noticeably doling-out carefully measured doses of dry boredom, such as the more obscure semi-modern and pseudo-classic composers, and the more ecclesiastically

banal moments of Handel and Haydn. One could count the rare occasions when such brilliant music as that of Schubert or Wagner is featured, or such stars as Gigli and Guila Bustabo and Korjus. The average compere’s conception of a classical programme compares with that of a spinsterish and cautious schoolmarm determined to educate her victims in faintly religious "culture." Amid all this boredom and banality, the frequent orchestral and classic programmes of a single station-1ZM-stand out; the programmes are conspicuous with recordings by the finest world artists, and are generously given. The announcements of items are also well done, briefly and impersonally-very much a contrast to the extraordinary attempts at sonorous or luscious "elocution" favoured by certain other announcers on the air, who give the impression that what they are interested in is the sound of their own tones, not their job of work. Vowels are moaned melodi« iously on a mounting register, and the pauses between French or Italian syllables are rich with melodrama. One feels that announcers with such a complex as this should be trying out their talents at the juvenile recitation Competitions, instead of merely broadcasting. This striving for tonal effect, at the expense of adult dignity, is also noticeable among announcers who run the children’s hours. Only in their case, gurgling patronage seems to alternate with a Sunday School or Salvationist twang of incredibly funny

intensity:

TULACH

(Timaru)