UP TO THE MINUTE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 740, 18 September 1953, Page 10

UP TO THE MINUTE

"MICROMANIA" is an occupational disease which afflicts radio speakers much as long-windedness attacks after-dinner orators. This distressing malady has been effectively preyented for some months past by Station 2XA, Wanganui, with a discussion programme limiting each speaker to just 60 seconds. "One Minute To Go" is slick and fast, springing highly-diverse topics on to its four speakers who, faced with the.need for quick comment, have brought out reflex opinions and statements that might have been lost with second thoughts, Though perhaps not as balanced as prepared opinions, their comments have had the virtue of spontaneity,. providing a rare insight into the immediate reactions of a bunch of fairly average New Zealanders to a variety of questions. Thus, the panel has just struck a glancing blow at married women who desert their children for careers; more or less agreed that we don’t really gain mych leisure from the 40-hour ° week; split fairly evenly on the merits of old furniture versus modern; converged again on New Zealanders’ attention to good food, and decided that the dissemination of Communist literature, while theoretically democratic, might have its hazards in uneducated hands. Impromptu speaking up-to-date, in fact.

M.P.

G.

(Readers are invited to submit comments, not more than 200 werds in length, on radio programmes. A fee. of one guinea will be paid after publication. Contributions should be headed "Radio Review,’"’ Unsuccessful entries cannot be returned, )