America's Open Microphones

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 666, 10 April 1952, Page 9

America's Open Microphones

c significant thing about American radio is that guest speakers are offered a completely open microphone — there are no censors, no script is demanded, and you are made to feel that what is wanted is frank, free and independent opinion, vigorously expressed. No withers are wrung by criticism." Kenneth Melvin, of Auckland, producer of the ZB series Going Places and Meeting People, told The Listener this when asked about the newspaper story which some months ago credited him with creating a near-sensation in New York by his comments as a Radio City guest speaker. The report said that irate Americans flooded the radio station with protest letters after Mr. Melvin had told them that New York was full of flummery and flap-doodle, that the country was adolescent and that its foreign policy was based on home-sickness. "It wouldn’t have been very bright of me to have spent my four quaiterhour broadcasts from New York in name calling," Mr. Melvin commented. "Nine tenths of what I said was laudatory, though obviously I tried to present the

British point of view to American listeners. I said that our uneasiness at the course of American. foreign policy focused chiefly on the apparent belief, in our view naive, that democracy can be exported, like dollars or machinery, as part of American foreign aid. And I stressed the fact that, although America, with prodigal generosity, is buttressing the entire Western World, she must learn the lesson already taught Britain’ by a thousand years of diplomati¢e ex-perience-that there is no short cut to the development of self-government and democratic liberalism. My plea was for Americans to realise that their bustling efficiency in business is no substitute for the specialised knowledge and understanding of foreign affairs which Britain alone can offer. Incidentally, although there was a considerable amount of ‘fan mail’ only one writer in every ten was critical of my broadcasts, and if there was a ‘near-sensation’ I was cettainly not aware of it. "The fact is, however, that almost anything one might say about America could be true-and yet untrue, for America is an altogether improbable country, a vast, exciting, stimulating country in which one may find both the worst and the best. I would be the last to condemn America or to be unfriendly about American eccentricities." Listeners will hear more about Mr. Melvin’s impressions of America when they tune in to the new series of Going Places and Meeting People, which has just begun from the ZBs and will begin from 2ZA on May 7. These programmes are being broadcast at 9.0 p.m. every Wednesday, and will include material from all of the fifteen countries visited during a twelve months’ tour. With his wife as secretary and sole technical staff Mr. Melvin travelled 40,000 miles by air, and 20,000 miles by car on the continent, in Great Britain, and in the U.S.A. He recorded an average of two half-hour programmes every week, in addition to. collecting an immense amount of recorded material for future use. Wherever he went he found local

broadcasting authorities friendly and cooperative, particularly Radio Malaya, the Egyptian State Broadcasting Service, Radio Italia, Radiodiffusion Francaise, the three major United States networks, and the Hessian Broadcasting Service of Southern Germany which enabled him to record the Mastersingers’ Festival at Frankfort on Main, The broadcast to be heard on Wednesday, April 16, will include recordings of Stanford’s Te Deum, presented at the opening service of the 1951 Edinburgh Festival in St. Giles Cathedral (the finest musical experience of the whole tour, Mr. Melvin thought), and an interview with Beverley Baxter, wellknown London journalist and politician. "Beverley Baxter is perhaps the most astute obsérver of the British political scene," said Mr. Melvin. "He is convinced that Anthony Eden is ‘not only the heir apparent to leadership of the British Tory Party, but could now at any time assume that leadership and become Prime Minister.’ " é Other highlights to be heard in future

episodes of Going’ Placeg and Meeting People will include children’s choirs in Scotland, Holland, Belgium and Germany; an address by Queen Wilhelmina — of the Netherlands; a message from their homeland for Dutch settlers in New Zealand; music from the Potzdamerplatz of Berlin; an interview. with the Mayor of the Western Zone of Berlin; songs recorded in the famous students’ inns of Heidelburg; barrackroom songs from Switzerland; folksongs from the villages of France; recordings made at the Burgundy Wine Harvest and at the wine tasting ceremony at Dijon;. scenes from the Paris nightclubs of Montmartre and Montparnasse; and several programmes from the: U.S.A., beginning with one on "What America Thinks About the British,"