THE PIPER AND THE TUNE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 70, 25 October 1940, Page 6

THE PIPER AND THE TUNE

Sir-yYour correspondent, Fred L. Garland, started something when he criticised your programmes, to which I am going to add a mite. You are spoiling the ship for a "penneth of tar." Poor quality of paper and small type do not make either more popular. Despite this, your paper would be worth 3d. if you really presented what we pay to receive-that is, a correct programme. Given a correct programme, listeners can suit themselves where they tune in. The programmes presented by the subsidiary stations, are very often more important to listeners than those from the main stations, yet all programmes from the sub-stations are printed in very small type-6 point Eyestrain. Why not scrap several pages of irrelevant matter, and have all the programmes set up in the same size type, giving equal prominence to each? The nark with you people is to see set down for Christchurch, where they have very tasteful programmes, an evening of chamber music, interspersed with items by Yehudi Menuhin and, say, the Philadelphia Orchestra; and when one is writing comfortably, to hear nothing but discordant noises and effects, which would probably be an ultra-modern jazz programme which has slipped in by mistake. This departing from programmes has occurred on several stations. The worst breach of faith with listeners (harsher words are justified), occurred about three weeks ago when a wrestling match was to be relayed from Christchurch. Listeners heard "We are now passing over to the .... Hall." After a considerable wait and no result, we were informed that there was a fault in the line; and a variety programme was substituted. Could any private concern get away with a thing like that? Would they not have had that fault remedied right away, and given listeners what they are paying so dearly for, Service? Speaking of service: why do we have so much time, hours per day, wasted on BBC or any other commentators’ "views"? There is too much of this giving us "views" for "news." Did not our own Government very recently put "off the air’ a local very clever, well-informed commentator, on similar grounds? : And finally, why are our best programmes given when the average working man cannot hear them? I refer to luncheon and dinner music. Now that Daventry encroaches so much on their time, cannot we have these programmes later in the evening, and in their place have some of those endless serial stories which seem to clutter up all programmes? To hear the same set of voices much of each day, and nearly every day, is just the last straw. but it mav

| help to digestion, evan blending with the soun-

H.

ALEXANDER

(Auckland).

(We are sure that our correspondent knows where to get the tar and the penny, but it is selfish not to tell us.-Ed.),