Fat and Famous

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 436, 31 October 1947, Page 5

Fat and Famous

HE "fat, lazy, wealthy insti- ‘ tution" which the world (including Mr. Doidge) knows as the BBC has somehow or other survived for 25 years. It has even «won a considerable amount of ad- # miration and envy, though it has had "nothing to force it out of its lethargy and complacency" but the pressure of men and women of intelligence and good taste. How much more famous it might have become under the pressure of the foolish as well no one can say, but it is at least possible that the result would have been a downward drag instead of an upward lift. It does happen sometimes that the blatantly vulgar frighten the ordinary decent into more active vigilance, and Mr. Doidge may be right in supposing that a return to the kind of competition we had in New Zealand not so many years ago would arouse the considerable section of easy-going listeners who are at present quiescent or asleep. Hitler made the democracies realise how precious a thing political liberty is, and how easily it can be lost. Perhaps Mr, Doidge was thinking of that when he said in Parliament last week that there "could be no hope of the best" in broadcasting in New Zealand without competition. It is a possible argument. But if it has any foundation in fact at all, it is a disagreeable argument. It means that the best in New Zealand depends on a further bitter experience of the worst, in spite of the lesson of the BBC and the longer and more sensational experience of the British press. The BBC is the best broadcasting service'in the world to-day, because it gave itself high standards and kept them. When Mr. Doidge ‘listens to its, Jubilee programmes f in a week or two he may sigh for the touch of a Press lord’s hand and the voice of another who is still. But if he calls the BBC a failure, or even a second-grade service, he will not find it easy to persuade the public that he has given broadcasting either study or _ thought.