Gone, No Address

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 331, 26 October 1945, Page 8

Gone, No Address

FOR the past year or so there has been at 1ZB each Sunday morning a session called "You'll Enjoy Education." These 15-minute talks were sometimes strictly factual (physiology, for instance) and sometimes touched on the more controversial issues of sociology and economics. The speaker was P. Martin Smith, director of Adult Education in Auckland. On September 30 the talk was given as usual with no indication that it was to be the last. On October 7 a médley of musical records took its place, and as the announcer made no explanation I rang the station, to be told curtly, "That session’s off the air." "For good?" "Yes, discontinued." One must assume in such case that everything has gone smoothly behind the scenes, that the proper things have been said and the necessary thanks expressed, that whichever pafty terminated the arrangement did so with fair warning, and that it is through mere carelessness that the talks are scheduled in the programmes as far ahead as October 31. But is it enough that courtesy should rule only behind the scenes? Is it not radio’s function to encourage the listener in the. illusion that he is one of an intimate group along with the announcer and the speaker? What becomes of the friendliness and responsiveness expected of this listener if, after months of punctual and happy attendance at a weekly meeting, he turns up one day to find the door suddenly and inexplicably barred against him? c