TEN OVER-CROWDED YEARS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 522, 24 June 1949, Page 6

TEN OVER-CROWDED YEARS

ITH this issue "The Listener" will be 10 years old, and though we do not claim that this is a very momentous anniversary or an excuse for trumpet-blowing, it is perhaps permissible to glance for a moment over our shoulder. For the first 10 years of "The Listener's" life have been important formative years also in New Zealand’s story, and most of the events and influences of those years, the trends and tendencies as well as the actual happenings, have been recorded or reflected in our pages: the taw material of the historian and the social scientist. However this survey is not concerned to criticise or to evaluate, but merely to remind.

HE paper was born under the shadow of war, and for the greater part of its existence has been published in wartime. If we had known that war would be on us before we were three’ months old, it is certain that we should never have started at all, But we did start: the first appearance was made on June 30, 1939-approximately 20 years after the first page of broadcasting history had been written in this country. It was a special free issue of 56 pages, 380,000 copies being distributed to householders, and our office statistician at the time worked out that it consumed nearly 2,000 miles of paper, sufficient almost to encircle both islands! HITLER CLIPPED OUR WINGS UCH prodigal use of newsprint was not to last long. Hitler saw to that. Our size, our shape, and in many respects our make-up too, are still what he made them when he cut our supplies of paper. But first there was a period when we used oceans of white space, wasteful headings, and large type in the editorial section with three wide columns to a page. In the programme section, 19 stations only were covered then, but we took three more pages than now to do it-plus two pages of programme chart in the centre. And-of course the advertisements were there too: just as necessary then as now for a paper which, though an official journal, has to make its way without State subsidy, but just as complicating a factor in make-up. That first issue contained several items which, when one looks back now, seem to have been prophetic. A message. from Professor James Shelley, Director of Broadcasting, about the influence of the radio, foreshadowed «the coming of war; another article drew optimistic attention to the construction of the future Broadcasting House (it is still in the future); while a prophetic note was also sounded in the title of a feature that is still with us-Things to Book reviews were with us from the start (the main review in the first issue was of J. D. Pascoe’s Unclimbed New Zealand). So was our artist, Russell Clark. So were the programmes and some of the items and performers in them, and so was our own editorial

emphasis on broadcasting, entertainment, literature and the arts, So ‘was our special domestic problem of having to print in Auckland a journal that is edited and prepared in Wellingtona factor which has often put us and our ‘subscribers at the mercy of bad weather and transport hold-ups, causing grey hairs among the staff in Wellington, and consternation in the printing works in Auckland. Several times a storm at Rongotai or a slip on the Main Trunk has made it seem impossible that The Listener could come out to schedule, just as at least twice during the war Hitler cut newsprint supplies so close to = bone that we gave ourselves only another month to live. But we survived Hitler and somehow we have managed to survive perils on the home front. And we shall probably continue to do so, Apart from this, however, not a very great deal that’ was in those first few issues has remained the same, There were farming articles by Mary Scott, articles on sport, and Notes from the Gallery of Parliament (they did not last long); and an interview with Adolph Zukor, president of Paramount Pictures, who expressed himself as "convinced that there will be no world conflict." That was on August 4, 1939. On September 8 appeared our eleventh issue: it was a National Emergency number. We were at war.

THE MAN IN THE STREET ON September 15 The Listener produced its first symposium — "War Comes to the Man in the Street"-the original of a type of feature, testing and reflecting public opinion on all manner of topics, which was to become.a specialty of the paper. At the same time we kept pace with popular taste in entertainment by publishing the music and words of "Boomps-a-Daisy." But then, and for quite a long time afterward, we were still printing the shortwave listings for stations in Berlin and Rome.

On September 29, The , Listener incorporated the Radio Record; inthe same issue was a feature entitled Wellington Roundabout by a contributor who called himself "Thid." This was the staffwriter Sydney Brookes, now _Reuter’s representative in Prague, who before he went overseas left his mark on the paper in many ways; as writer of short stories under his own name, as sports writer, as Puzzle editor, as writer of the two controversial series Citizen into Soldier and Soldier into Civilian, and as the man responsible for running to earth and interviewing W. H: ("Chinese") Donald and several other elusive celebrities who passed through New Zealand, and our pages, in those earlier days. In October of 1939 there was the first of a feature called War Diary, and of a lengthy series about announcers and other radio personalities; our 19th issue, of November 3, was devoted to the Centennial Exhibition and thereafter the Exhibition was for a time to colour a good many of our pages, especially those devoted to the ZB stations. In the same month The Listener's Puzzle

Corner was overflowing into a full page nearly every issue; Dr. Elizabeth Bryson was opening up a series on Food Fads and Fancies with the memor-

able statement that "there is only one exercisé that is really effective for reducing weight: it consists of a slow and decided movement of the head from left to right and back again when starchy foods are offered"; Aunt Daisy was making her bow to readers on December 1 under the same heading as today, and with Christmas Cakes as her theme; and in their section of the paper the Commercial stations were carrying out all manner of experiments in the presentation of their programmes and news items.

The year 1940 began with the war still in the sit-down stage in Europe and still a trifle unreal and faraway in New Zealand. We were still being lavish with white space and headings and were still running three columns to the page of editorial matter, but were finding it necessary to reduce the type size in some places-a development not welcomed by some correspondents who, at that stage, were mostly using the columns next to the leading article to say What They Thought of Us. It was, indeed, not until a good deal later that Letters from Listeners assumed their characteristic of being often as vitriolic as they are varied, and. that the little word "Ed." became something to look for in small type at the bottom of many of them.

NO JAZZ JOURNALISM UT even by then the character and purpose of the paper had already become fairly clear-cut. It was expressed in an editorial of January~5, 1940, which, commenting gn the debut of the ABC. Weekly, said: "It would help our readers and help us if they would get it finally into their heads that to ask a Government to produce jazz-journalism is the same thing as asking it to teach the can-can to school children," As was the case with the correspondence columns and some of the features, it took some time for many of the nowfamiliar names of contributors and ~interviewees to start appearing in our columns, But at the beginning of 1940 we had interviews with Halliday Sutherland, John Grierson, Maria Dronke, James Bertram, Ngaio Marsh, and Oscar Natzke (that was the way he spelt it then) and we recorded the fact that Andersen Tyrer had arrived to direct the music of the Centennial Celebrations. And there were those spécial Tributes to Finland, France, and Norway in which we seemed unconsciously to fill the role of a prgphet of doom, since almost no sooner had our tribute to its hergic resistance appeared than the country in question collapsed before

its invader. On March 21 we announced the sending to Egypt of a New Zealand Broadcasting Unit; on April 5 we had a memorial number to the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage; the same issue contained the first appearance of People in the Programmes (but in a different form from now); May 31 saw the beginning of a long-running feature called Did You Hear This? consisting of extracts from radio talks; on June 21 all readers Teceived a copy of Our National Song, "God Defend New Zealand," and on the same date we marked the entry of Italy into the war with an editorial entitled "Now the Vultures." On August 9, with Issue No. 59, our editorial face was redder than it has ever been since, because of an articleand particularly a poster — about the American elections and the symbols of Ass and Elephant used by the two main parties in it. A good many people probably by now know the reason for our embarrassment, but the time has not yet come to tell the story in full in public. We have, of course, had many other causes to blush in retrospect-when we suggested that Gamelin was the greatest general since Napoleon; the atticle headed "Singapore is Impregnable"; the time we sent Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail to bed, along with Peter for being naughty little rabbits, and, more recently, the "Seddon" photograph. Our- circulation in 1940 was 40,000 (compared with approximately 90,000 to-day); we had already had to come down to 48 pages in size and been forced to drop several features, including the programme chart in the centre; there was a new make-up for the programme section, incorporating the ZB stations with the Nationals; on October 25 Ignaz Friedman was with us; and on November 15 we presented a gift portrait of Winston Churchill which a good many of our readers liked but some didn’t. Film notes by G.M, had.appeared regularly since our seventh issue, of August 11, 1939, and the heading Speaking Candidly was also being used, but it was not until November 29, 1940, that the Little Man made his debut in this feature. From this time on and for a fairly long period, the cinema was a good deal in evidence in our pages, with special pictorial features from time to time for such films as The Great Dictator, Fantasia, Gone With the Wind, For Whom the Bell Tolls, World of Plenty, and Henry V (Sir James Shelley wrote for us his personal impressions of the last-named).

PORTRAIT PERIOD IMULTANEOUSLY and to a very much greater degree, of course, the war was making an increasingly marked impact on our pages. ‘There was the coming of conscription in New Zealand, the beginning of our, Citizen Into Soldier series (on February 14, 1941); the Lessons in Morse and the Lessons in French; the arrival home of the first casualties, Hess’s flight to Scotland, and a gift potrait of Major-General B. cS Freyberg (all on May 23). On July 4 we took notice of Russia’s entry into the war, and the same issue contained a gift portrait of Roosevelt. (This was what might be called our Portrait Period, because we had another, of Mr. Fraser, on September 19 of the same year, and one of Her Majesty the Queen with Princess Margaret Rose in our Christmas number of December 12.) And more and more at this time this aspect or that of the war came into our pages through the BBC talks which we printed. . . . talks by Vansittart (the

Black Record controversy raged in the correspondence columns for weeks), Laski, Hugh Walpole, Dr. William Temple, Wickham Steed, J. B. Priestley ("our propaganda is simply. terrible"), and many others. Still, it was not all war. Noel Coward was in New Zealand and talked to us; contributors deluged us with a series entitled It Happened to Me; such names as D. O. W. Hall, H. C. D. Somerset, F. L. W. Wood, F. L. Combs, and J. C. Beaglehole were starting to appear fairly regularly in our book review columns; Professor F. Sinclaire wrote for us; in 1941 there was a Children’s Page with a serialisation of Stella Morice’s Book of Wiremu;;and Dr. Muriel Bell and Dr. H. B. Turbott had started to give us Advice on Health,

WAR IN THE PACIFIC N our issue of December 19, 1941, we recorded Japan’s entry into the war, and on January 23, 1942, it was noted editorially that "The War Comes to The Listener." . . .. "Everything we do, whether. it is done well or done badly, is done with greater difficulty than in times of peace," the specific occasion for this comment being a newsprint crisis and a drop to 40 pages from the accustomed 56 or 48. We were to fall still lower later-to 32 pages onlyand it may be as well to notice at this point the contortions which the war forced on our shape as well as our size, three times reducing us to narrow-gauge by cutting a column off our width. But the war was affecting more than our physical appearance; as it crept closer to this country it was more and more overshadowing the daily lives of all New Zealanders, and this was being shown in our pages. We started printing EPS talks and advice: and round about

May 8 The Listener, as well as the public, was reacting sharply to the presysnee of American marines and sailors in our midst without (in our case) actually saying that they were . here-for security "Our Girls and the Ameri-

cans" was an atticle from this period which attracted a good deal of notice. A corresponding interest wT.

America in us was testified to by the increasing numbers of American journalists who visited New Zealand to accumulate background and who were interviewed by The Listener, At the same time, the symposia type of article was becoming more and more frequent, with the emphasis increasingly on the post-war world; we collected opinions from all and sundry on such topics as education and reconstruction, the United Nations, the Campaign for Christian Order, the effect of war on shopping manners, The World We Want and The World We Expect, and so on, Russia, too, was more and more a subject for description, comment, and argument (to mention a case at random, on August 28, 1942, a regular contributor A.M.R. wrote an article about Stalingrad which showed that we were not always wrong). India also, and particularly Gandhi, was of interest — The Listener probably did more than any other New Zealand paper to present little-known aspects of the man and his philosophy. And from about the end of 1942 dates our considerable interest in China (with some concentration on Rewi Alley). Life continued to be not wholly serious; there were verses of Whim-Wham, and Music Notes by Marsyas, Simple Stories and Listening While I Work (the forerunner of Radio Viewsreel). And overlooked in this ‘survey until now but a very old companion-it started a year after The © Listener-the Crossword Puzzle of R.W.C. was pleasing its devotees every week. Highlights of 1944 were the Free Supplement on The House of Representatives on March 31: four pages on April 28 devoted to A. P. Gaskell’s football story One Hell of a Caper, and from June onward, D-day and its repercussions, *

PEACE BREAKS OUT E must press on. The next year was notable, on February 16, for our story about the Sheep That Went to China (but didn’t get there that time), for "Back in My Tracks: A Native Returns to Central Otago" (a foretaste of the Sundowner series), for our Victory Issue on May 11, when we threw out all NAS ES, 2 eae eae =

advertisements except those on the programme pages, and for the visit of Gracie Fields in August. That same month the Atom Bomb hit the world and The Listener then and thereafter tried to estimate what it meant. On August 24 we published a short story, The First Leaf Falls, which we had rejected a month or so before as being too fantastic: it was about an atom-bomb raid. © On October 12 we interviewed Robert Gibbings; on November 16 James Bertram started a series of articles about ‘Japan; the name of UNRRA, and its local subsidiary CORSO, figured often in interviews and articles. Then on February 8, 1946, The Listener went toTokio in the person of its Editor, and on March 22 began publishing his impressions of Ten Days in Japan; on May 10 we made a deal with The New Yorker which, for a time, added something to the gaiety of the nation: so did A.A.’s" interview, on June 28, with Professor Allen, the Chocolate Nightingale and Human Submarine. On July 5 there was the official announcement of the formation of the National Symphony Orchestra, and by March 21 of the following year the Orchestra was a reality: in that issue J. C. Beaglehole’s review of its first performance caused something of a flutter,

RECENT HISTORY HE rest is such relatively recent history that it is not necessary, even if it were possible, to do more than skim through the files and notice a few highlights . . . such as the start of the Sundowner series (on October 11, 1946), Beatrice Ashton’s American Impressions, and J. H. Sorenson’s notes on the wildlife of the Sub-Antarctic. The celebration of Otago’s Centennial in 1948 was marked by a special issue, and with "Sundowner" himself then on the right side of Cook Strait the South Island continued to figure regularly and prominently in the pages. "Sundowner’s" wanderings continued to be chronicled until March of this year, but even after the New Zealand journey was completed, The Listemer continued to reflect that interest in the land, and in New Zealand life, which so strongly characterised "Sundowner’s" journalistic odyssey. To complete this survey with a few general impressions drawn from the post war issues; one notices a- continuing interest in education (many articles and talks on the University, UNESCO, etc.), a growing preoccupation with science, and a good deal more space devoted to the facts and personalities of radio (due to some extent to the opening of several new transmitters), At the same time The Listener, having early established itself as a forum for ideas, has maintained that reputation. One cannot mention all the names, but through our pages thousands have heard for the first time of McCormick, Holcroft, Combs, Henderson, Beaglehole, Fairburn, Gordon, Wadman, Sargeson, Vogt, Mulgan, Somerset. We may perhaps be allowed to repeat what was said some years ago’ about us by a contributor: he pointed out that, in The Listener "there is often a question-mark at the end of a statement in the heading-Training Society to Think? is the name of one such article. It seems to be the aim of the whole staff."