Coating the Pill

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 327, 28 September 1945, Page 13

Coating the Pill

UCH natural irritation, as the London telephone service found, can be. smoothed away by. a golden voice. I have been listening regularly lately to the Consumer Time session broadcast simultaneously by most stations each week. As the voice is anonymous, I may

perhaps say without offence that it is composed of metal less mellow than gold. That is a pity, for as consumers we are in an irritable state. While our minds accept the inevitability of shortages and try to digest the reasonable explanations given in Consumer Time, our nerves are in weary rebellion against the prolonged inconvenience caused by these upheavals, and to be effective the voice should be directed at our nerves as well as at our intelligences. This is too important a session for this aspect to be neglected. We do not want a golden voice reading

with detachment a script prepared by someone else, nor do we want anything too la-di-da, for that is apt to make New Zealanders suspect hanky-panky. But there are some very good voices about, both male and_ female; thete are the Maoris, too, whose vocal beauty might ‘be more widely used. My own vote would go to something with a trace of Scots in it. These voices fall pleasantly om the ear and (speaking for those of us who are not Scots ourselves) seem to carry complete conviction-in this case a major consideration, |