Bringing Back the Past

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 11

Bringing Back the Past

ADIO is not quite so evanescent an art as we often suppose. The word trembles on the tongue of the speaker, is uttered, transmitted and becomes, apparently, no more than a brief memory. And so, too, with music. But in actual fact an extraordinary amount of radio material is saved from oblivion by being recorded. Speeches, commentaries, discussions, even local musical programmes, often come on the air in recorded form, or may be recorded as they are broadcast. This material will form precious archives for future historians, for, presumably, the Broadcasting Service will not follow the example of the films and make a bonfire of what is no longer in use. Occasionally, too, we can already use this mass of recorded material for historical purposes. Winston McCarthy drew largely on these resources for his memorial programme on the death of Lovelock. McCarthy contented himself’ with a brief, restrained account of Lovelock’s career and it was undoubtedly the three recordings of Lovelock’s speeches which stirred listeners’ emotions. Nothing could have brought back more poignantly memories of the man himself and of the attitudes and ideals he represented for his countrymen than his own simply spoken words. In programmes such as this radio demonstrates that immediacy of appeal which it possesses pre-eminently over all other organs of communication.