Controversy

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 384, 1 November 1946, Page 5

Controversy

T will be interesting to see if the demand for controversy on the air remains after November 27, and if it does, what kind of a demand it then is. The Listener will be glad if it remains, since the more arguments there are the easier it is to maintain interest in our talks pages. But it is worth pointing out in the meantime that there has never been a day since broadcasting began in New Zealand when it would have been correct to say that the programmes were non-controversial. It is controversial to say that the weather will be fine, since there is always someone who believes, and believes strongly, that it will not be. In this case too the objector is usually in a strong position in New Zealand, and always has been. But controversy goes far beyond the weather. If we pass over the religious broadcasts, which are controversial from the first hymn to the last prayer but a special case, we shall still find somebody saying something every two or three thinutes to which somebody else strongly objects. If Beethoven is presented as a great composer, someone else is saying not so great as Handel or Bach. If a speaker calls Dickens a genius, there is a listener somewhere who thinks that speaker a fool. If the Health Department suggests the eating of brown bread, or of more apples or less meat, there are people who would like to have the Department silenced for business reasons and others who would do it in what they would regard as the interests of science. What people really mean when they ask for controversy on the air is more controversy, or controversy on a different range of subjects, or controversy presented in a different way. They want an argumentspeakers contradicting one another and quarrelling in front of the microphone; propaganda for a particular cause-the cause they themselves believe in; attacks on other causes-the ones they hate; and so on. If they are now demanding disagreements they of course mean new and more violent disagreements with the dust rising on the studio floor,