TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF RADIO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 489, 5 November 1948, Page 7

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF RADIO

The Story of Broadcasting in New Zadland-

OVEMBER is Radio Month. To mark the anniversary of 25 years of broadcasting in New Zealand, the seven main National stations will broadcast a special feature called Marconi’s Child Grows Up. This programme is in four episodes, which will be heard on the four Sunday evenings in November, starting this Sunday, November 7, at 6.0 p.m. Up to November, 1923, broadcasting in New Zealand was in the hands of a few enthusiastic amateurs, but on that date the Government passed legislation preparing for a network of powerful stations, thus laying the foundations of the complex organisation which is today the NZBS, with 23 stations broadcasting to over 422,000 licence-holders. Marconi’s Child Grows Up ttells the story of how this expansion came about, and re-enacts in documentary fashion many broadcasting highlights of the past, with illustrations taken from old recordings in the NZBS library.

Episode One, "The First Six Years," covers’ the period from 1923 to the completion of Station 4YA in 1929. Listeners will hear something of the protracted negotiations and petitions to Parliament, and; on the entertainment side, the voices of Nellie Stewart, Rosina Buckman, and other artists of the acoustic recording period. The voice of the late Sir Charles .Kingsford Smith is also heard, with a description of his landing at Sockburn+Field, Christchurch, after the first trans-Tasman flight of the Southern Cross, while other featured events are broadcasts to Byrd’s expedition in the Antarctic in 1929, extracts from speeches by King George V and the Duke of Windsor (then Prince of Weles), and an account of the part played by radio in the Murchison earthquake, Episode Two takes the story up to the formation of the Broadcasting Board in 1931. Mention is made of the depression years, the London Five-Power Naval Conference, the Napier earthquake, and early s ih the use of radio for educational purposes.

The Third Episode covers the years 1932 until the outbreak of war. It describes the formation of the National Broadcasting Service in 1936, and the establishment of recording studios, a Talks Department, a Productions Department, and, in 1937, the inauguration of the Commercial division. The final episode deals with the war and post-war years, and the series ends with a» hint at future expansion and developments to come. The scripts of Marconi’s Child Grows Up were written by Stephen Solly, who wrote the series of industrial documentaries now being heard from the ZB stations on Sunday evenings. The programmes were produced in the Production Studios of the NZBS. a