The Cost of Listening

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 469, 18 June 1948, Page 5

The Cost of Listening

week have asked us to tell them why they pay their licence fees. The first wrote because he gets jazz on the air when he wants classical music; the second because he gets classical music when his soul cries out for jazz. We are not sure why the third wrote, since he finds talks dreary, but says that he never listens to them. But each of these letters was wrongly addressed. Programmes are not prepared in The Listener office, or inspired or censored there, and if they were we could still not pretend to know why any reader pays a listening fee. We would know only what he gets or can get for his money, and that ‘whether he pays more or less in New. Zealand than the same service costs in other countries, he still pays so little that to complain of the cost calls for some daring. The cost of listening in New Zealand is a little less than a penny a day for a service that hormally lasts 17 hours. For this ridiculous fee-not for each individual but for a whole household | --the listener can hear what is happening overseas, what the weather is likely to be, what to expect as a buyer or a seller, what to do if he is sick and what dangers to avoid when he is travelling, how and when to cook his dinner, and why he should or should not have eggs for breakfast or sugar in his tea or wool next his skin. He is taken to church, to school, to the theatre, to the races, to boxing, wrestling, football, cricket, and a dozen other games and diversions. Only the newspapers give anything like the service provided every day by radio, and they charge a great deal more for a good deal less. It is open to any listener to complain of the content of the programmes. To complain of their cost is about as reasonable as to complain of the size, shape, colour, or conversation of the men who keep our postal and transport services going or provide the fuel to cook our meals and keep us warm. ze correspondents this