1ZB's NEW STUDIOS ARE LAST WORD IN MODERNITY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 121, 17 October 1941, Unnumbered Page

1ZB's NEW STUDIOS ARE LAST WORD

IN MODERNITY

First Pictorial Record EVEN those who have had report of their modernity are surprised and delighted at their first glimpse of the new 1ZB studios which were officially opened on October 6 by the Hon. David Wilson, Minister in Charge of Broadcasting. Station 1ZB, now situated in ‘Durham Street, just off Auckland’s busiest ‘thoroughfare, claims, and can justly claim, to be the last word in radio broadcasting. Those who designed the studios had the advantage of experiénce gained by broadcasting authoritiés in England, America, and Australia. Size and other special circumstances taken into account, Station 1ZB will compare very favourably, the Commercial Broadcasting Service believes, with studios anywhere in the world. The building also houses, of course, the offices of several other Government departments. The story of 1ZB is most effectively told, perhaps, by means of pictures, and here, on this and the opposite page, is the first pictorial record of the new station.

qt is a far cry from the cramped and unhealthy premises in the Queen’s Arcade which have served 1ZB for so many years, to the spacious studios in Durham Street. Summer days meant almost unbearable stuffiness in the old studios; the new are air conditioned by a plant which attends automatically to the slightest variations in temperature and humidity. Where artists were once expected to give of their best in a few square feet of studio, they have now unlimited space at their command, Technicians, artists, announcers, copywriters, programme organisers, accounts clerks-in fact, members of the staff from the station director down to the humblest message boy, are all now in several times the area they once occupied. The result will be, the CBS hopes, a corresponding increase in the all-round efficiency of the station and an improvement in quality of programmes, which is, after all, what the listening public is most interested in.