Early and Late

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 540, 28 October 1949, Page 10

Early and Late

ATE night request sessions from 1ZB follow the too familiar request session, pattern. One would expect that, in normal circumstances, requests would be for pieces not heard at all, or heard infrequently in- ordinary programmes. Yet about 80-per cent. of each session. consists of items played dozens of times a week. Anyone who listens fairly regularly to the radio could predict accurately the principal pieces to be offered. People are, of course, entitled to ask for anything on these occasions;

still, to me it is a profound mystery why anybody should want to hear "Buttons and Bows" or "Water Boy" more than 20 times in the same week. The whole matter is properly one for the serious student of New Zealand culture, I suppose; but I can think of four possible explanations, apart from the unpredictable "sentimental association": (1) People want to hear their names on the air, and they pick the first tune that comes into their heads to accompany jt; (2) The folk who listen to request sessions listen to nothing else; (3) The "plugging" of banal "tunes is a disease some people have contracted from the radio; (4) The ‘average popular piece is so like a gassy, coloured soft drink that it brings out the child in listeners, so that, like youngsters at a school picnic, they feel impelled to stuff themselves with it to the point of satiation.

J.C.

R.