"A BEAR COUGHED"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 434, 17 October 1947, Page 18

"A BEAR COUGHED"

The Historg ol Station IAMA

cent novel, A Bear Coughed at the North Pole, discusses the possible interrelation of unimportant happenings, and ‘though one may doubt the connection between a bear’s bronchial trouble in the Arctic and the death of several people in Chungking, history has many times shown that seemingly unimporte::t and isolated events have had _ far-reaching consequences. : Even in the record of New Zealand broadcasting-which forms only a very small chapter in world histdry-there is at least one such example. For the Auckland subsidiary station 1ZM came into being as a result of a man_ being separated by his work from his wife and home. The story was told by the man who founded the station, W. W. Rodgers, Snr.; to his Auckland broadcasting colleagues recently when they gathered to farewell him on his retirement from the service. Twenty-one years ago, Mr. Rodgers recounted, after some years of experience in the. retail radio field in Britain, he came to New Zealand as the represenPAYNE in his re-

tative of a number of British radio firms. Later he established his own business of radio construction and repairs, and as the enterprise expanded he found himself having to spend more and more time away from home-sometimes he was away for two or three months on end, Neither he nor his wife were happy about the long separations Mr. Rodgers’s (continued on next page)

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work was causing and so it was decided to establish a smal! radio station at his home at Manurewa with a view to necessitating his being home at the week-ends to operate it. So began 1ZM. As time went on the station’s popularity grew, and the hours-and daysof broadcasting were gradually increased, as were also the costs of operation, until finally Mr. Rodgers decided he could no longer afford to foot the bill. He considered the newspapers the most likely concerns to be interested in the station, and he tossed a coin to decide which of the two dailies he should ap-proach-heads the Star, tails the Herald. The coin fell head uppermost and there followed an interview with the manag-ing-director of New Zealand Newspapers, Ltd., Sir Cecil Leys, which resulted in the Star taking over 1ZM. Later, with a change in Government policy towards independent stations, 1ZM came under the control of the Broadcasting Service, but Mr. Rodgers remained on the staff as programme organiser. In his farewell talk he mentioned that he had made one big break in his life when he came out to New Zealand from England; now he was making another. Instead of going into quiet retirement as would most men of his years, Mr. Rodgers is starting a new venture. He has sold his Auckland home and has leased land on Norfolk Island, where he plans to raise fruit, produce and flowers for the Auckland market.