QUIZZING WITHOUT A SHIRT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 236, 31 December 1943, Page 8

QUIZZING WITHOUT A SHIRT

Pacific "Radio" Service OMEWHERE inthe South Pacific there is a radio station where the quizzmaster "quizzes" in the semi-nude. News broadcasts, propaganda and the like do not concern the shirtless’announcer and his shirtless assistants-his business is front-line morale. Radio B.U.N.K., New Georgia, is the call-sign. Bidding fair to be the world’s strangest broadcasting set-up, the station is the result of much enterprise and ingenuity on the part of South Pacific airmen at an R.N.Z.A.F. base on tropical New Georgia in the Solomon Islands area. Like a wartime recipe, the organisation has few ingredients, consisting mainly of a tent, packing cases and a public address system. What is lacking in 1ZB "streamlinedness" and general opulence, however, is more than compensated for by resource" and local wit. Nightly broadcasts are made to the camp, loudspeakers being placed at strategic positions throughout the grounds. Sessions cover all forms of musical presentation, the only limitation being the records on _ hand. Thoroughly "ZB-ish" in some respects, the station features quizz sessions, often with a touch of local colour,

Defiance of convention is the keynote of Radio B.U.N.K., and no fewer than seven or eight technicians, announcers, effect men, script-writers and general ‘supporters co-operate simultaneously in operating the plant. Quizz scripts are sometimes concocted and put across on the spot; and insect swatting, lighting of pipes, and peeling-off of shirts do much to strip the station of

the commonplace. The announcer’s desk is a packing-case covered with an issue blanket. This New Georgian public-address-cum-radio «station, with its ability to provide command performances at two minutes’ notice, and with a range and repertoire of no practical value to enemy intelligence, is doing a solid job of maintaining morale.