Preparing for the Empire Games

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 531, 26 August 1949, Page 8

Preparing for the Empire Games

EW ZEALAND’s first Empire Games Meeting, to be held at Auckland from February 4-11 next year, will be fully covered by the New Zealand Service, and already the -NZBS is making plans to accommodate ‘those commentators who will arrive from overseas broadcasting organisations as well as its own sporting experts. The BBC will probably be represented by Patrick Jubb (who represents the Corporation in Australia and New Zealand) and G. Looker (Programme-Director of the Pacific Service of the BBC). The Australian Broadcasting Commission has indicated that it will send its commentators, Bernard Kerr and Talbot Duckmanton. These visitors will have New Zealand commentaries and material made available to them. No detailed information has yet been received by the NZBS about the countries intending to take part in the Games, the number of competitors, or the events they propose to enter, but it is expected that a good deal more will be known by November 1. In the meantime, planning of broadcast coverage will be limited. So far it has been arranged for the commentators to use one box with two compartments, so that the announcer can be apart from the technician if desired at each ground, except at Karapiro where a mobile recording unit will be used to cover the rowing events. The commentators will be given Press facilities so that they

will be able to return to the recording studios and prepare their reports, summaries and impressions, The Australian Broadcasting Commission proposes to give each day, from 10.07 a.m. to 10.15 aim. a preview of the day’s events; from 11.30 am. to 11,40 am., results and commentaries; 1.0 p.m. to 1.30 p.m., results, comments, descriptions or recordings; 3.23 p.m. to 3.30 p.m., results; 5.0 p.m. to 5.30 p-m., results, comments, descriptions or recordings; 8.25 p.m. to 8.35 p.m., results and comments on the day’s highlights; 9.15 p.m. to 9.30 p.m., Empire Games Report; 11.0 p.m. to 11.30 p.m., results and recorded descriptions of the evening events; 12 midnight to 12.05 a.m., Empire Games Stop Press on any late results, and a brief summary. Schedules of this type will be handled by the NZBS for the other broadcasting (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) organisations if they require such a coverage, with the limitation that actuality broadcasts might be by an Australian, a South African, a Canadian or a New Zealand commentator, depending on which one is in the commentators’ box at the time. With two stations and a recording studio in Auckland, two mobile recording vans and a sufficient number of tape-recorders, the NZBS will be able to give the various commentators the means to edit and record their comments and descriptions and feed them to the Post Office for transmission through its radio link and over the NZBS shortwave stations.