New Year's Eve Highlights

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 496, 24 December 1948, Page 17

New Year's Eve Highlights

N spite’ of the new calendars on our desks, many of us no doubt will continue to be forgetful, and write 1948 on the date-line of our letters for the first few days of the New Year. And that will be entirely our own fault, for the NZBS stations, both National and Commercial, will remind all listeners on Friday, December 31, and in the very early hours of Saturday, January 1, that 1948 is changing into 1949, and that we are on the tailpiece of the half-century. | On the night of New Year’s Eve-New Year’s Day, the four main National stations will close down at 1.0 a.m. and the Commercial stations will also remain on the air till well after normal bedtime. Following the traditional observance of the passing of the Old Year and | coming of the New, 1YA will present, at 12.5 a.m., Northumbrian Barn Dance, a BBC feature which includes northcountry dance tunes, a singer, a reciter, and a girl who plays the Northumbrian pipes. The broadcast will conclude with recorded dance music. After New Year’s Evo celebrations between 11.59 p.m. and 12.5 a.m., 2YA will present, till closing down, a programme of light music, songs and sketches. The evening programme at 3YA will start at 7.30 o'clock, with a recording of To-day’s the Day, a Hogmanay pro-| gramme (as Scots prefer to call it) of | seasonal exuberance. At 9.30 p.m. there will be a presentation called In the Scottish Tradition, by 3YA artists, who. with pipes and song will express the wish "Lang may your lum reek." In Ring Out the Old, at 11.50. pm. listeners will hear bells and singing from Cathedral Square, Old-time dance music will take up the rest of the programme. Dunedin’s 4YA Studio Singers will | be heard at 8.0 p.m. in Jolly Begégars, a musical offering with a Scottish flavour | -poems by Robert Burns set to music based on original airs by W. A. Henderson, and under the direction of George Wilkinson. To-day’s the Day. will be broadcast at 9.35 p.m., and at 11.45 p-m there will be a studio presentation of We Welcome You-1949, with Scottish solos and items by the Dunedin Highland Pipe Band. Dance music will | be played till close down. : The four ZB stations will present special programmes during the evening and herald the coming of the New Year. at midnight. In Auckland, 1ZB will, take a microphone into Queen Street to relay the noise of the celebrating crowds, Station 2ZB will present at 11.15 p.m. Blue Print for 1949, referring to coming events such as the All Black | Rugby tour of South Africa, cricket in New Zealand this season, and the visit to New Zealand in Februafy of the Italian Grand Opera Company. Christchurch listeners will hear a relay by 3ZB at 11.0 p.m, from New Brighton beach, where there will be a bonfire and community singing. Dunedin has planned a night carnival in aid of the Mission to Seamen, at Tahuna Patk, where there will be a barbecue, sporting events, Highland dancing, concert items, side-shows and community singing.