Something of Our Own

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 545, 2 December 1949, Page 10

Something of Our Own

NE of the major differences between broadcasting in New Zealand and broadcasting out of it is that we have very little that can be called our own. Music comes almost exclusively from overseas, few of the short stories read are by New Zealandersan old plaint this!-and not many of the plays have any native imprint. (As list-

eners we are more familiar with the inflections and idioms of the Englishman, be he cockney, butler, or belted. Earl, or the American, be he from Brooklyn or the Deep South, than we are of the New Zealander, be he from the King Country, the West Coast or the town.) It is therefore with an_ interest that amounts almost to avidity that we

tune in to a programme which purports to show us to ourselves. If the scene presented has a background of countryside or history which is familiar to us, the interest is heightened still further, and it was With more than casual curiosity that I listened to the Mobile Unit’s visit to Arrowtown. The programme opened on a _ good line-"This week we are in jail"-and we were then introduced to the local constable and shown around the old stone building. But the joke staled. To all intents and purposes, we stayed in jeil throughout the broadcast, which to law-abiding citizens like ourselves seemed a little unfair. We were not taken to the museum which deserves more than a casual glarice, nor were we given any real idea of what the town looks like. The lovely old trees which line Buckingham Street were mentioned, but only casually; they were never described, nor were the little wooden cottages which are so much a part of the scene. The records of Arrowtown in its gold-mining days are numerous enough and hectic enough to form the basis of more than one picaresque novel, but they are not the whole story of Arrowtown’ which was presented to us as a relic of bygone days, a sleepy hollow basking in the sun of dead splendours, a "quaint," quiet memorial to past grandeurs and past extravagances. There is life.in Arrow today which is as individual though less flamboyant than in the old days, but this was hardly touched on, f The only time the broadcast gripped us was when one or two "old identities" (all women as I remember) were interviewed. This part of the programme was really excellent. The voices were natural, unaffected and warm with humanity. We were told of things remembered; the drunken woman chained to the log, the Chinese who went far afield to get ducks to sell because those taken from a certain locality always had gold in’ their crops, the man who begged for a night’s

lodging and turned out to be all that was left of one of the biggest, brawniest and most aggressive of the gold diggersand so on. This was the real thing and came alive to us, not because of historical interest alone, but because the speakers themselves were very much alive. Records like these-the voices and the stories-are priceless and for these alone the programme justified itself, But for the rest, the script was in.

coherent and facetious. The facetiousness got in the way of information and wasted time. A lack of routine blue pencilling was obvious. The word "massive," for instance, occurred so often that I got to the length of | counting the times it occurred, The idea of the Mobile Unit is a very good one. The "personal appear-

ance of men and women as closely identified with the country as were the old ladies in this broadcast was invaluable, but the scripting and general approach could be improved. There was too much sentiment and not enough

sensibility.

Sycorax