Sportswoman on the Air

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 457, 25 March 1948, Page 11

Sportswoman on the Air

(COMPLAINTS were made in the correspondence columns of The Listener recently that too much broadcast time was given up to sport. But figures published in the annual reports ‘of the NZBS and the ABC show that the Australian Broadcasting Commission devotes just over 5 per cent of its time to sporting results whereas in New Zealand the figure is 3 per cent. The Listener asked Dot Debnam (Mrs, D. Mummery in private life), manageress of the visiting Australian women’s cricket team, and one of the two women sports announcers in Australia, what she thought of the comparison between the two countries. "T don’t know what your figures are, but I do know that people call us Australians sports-mad," said Mrs. Mummery, whose broadcast session, for 10 minutes every Saturday morning on the national inter-State programme, covers every women’s sport from croquet +o baseball. "In Melbourne alone six commercial and two national programmes give up a lot of time to sport. I'm afraid that when we pick up our morning paper we read the sports page first then the comics, then the local news and finally the international newswhich, I suppose, is rather awful. Speaking of the present tour, she remarked that she was tremendously impressed with the interest-a sensible interest-taken in women’s cricket in New Zealand. "In Australia they call it the hit-and-giggle-game," she said. "But

here we are really treated as cricketers. That’s good for the girls and good for the game." Interviewed by 2ZB while in Wellington, Mrs. Mummery had some encouraging things to say about the ability of New Zealand’s women cricketers and the physique of New Zealand girls generally.