New Plan for YC Talks

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 19

New Plan for YC Talks

MANY spoken word programmes for YC stations, produced either by individual stations or by the Head Office Talks Section of the NZBS, ate to be heard more widely in future under a scheme for pooling these programmes which comes into operation next month. Trevor Williams, who is in charge of YC programmes at Talks Section, explained to The Listener that stations will draw from the pool during the three months November to January new programmes which had been produced by Head Office and programmes broadcast

during the past three months by the stations which produced them. The pool would be constantly renewed by the addition of new programmes from both sources. Under the new scheme each YC. station would draw four spoken word programmes a week from the pool "and produce and broadcast a new pro-

gramme of its own which would go into the pool for the next quarter. They would also, of course, continue to produce certain programmes of their own for local playing. Mr. Williams said that the scheme should make YC _ spoken word material of much richer quality available throughout the country, and as in’ the past some of the programmes would no doubt be repeated later from YA and YZ stations. One of the first of the new programmes to go on the air will be a series of talks on the amateur theatre recorded by J. Frances MacKenzie of the British Drama League before she returned to Britain. Miss MacKenzie was in New Zealand for several months and conducted drama classes throughout the country. Her talks, which will cover many aspects of the theatre, will start from 4YC in Review next week. These talks should interest a wide audience of lovers of the theatre, and like many others in the YC pool will not appeal exclusively to a "highbrow" audience. Another new series with a wide appeal is Quotation and Misquotation (see also_ page 25). A programme *for a slightly more restricted audience to start next week (2YC, November 3), is Waiting for the Taniwha, two talks by R. T. Robertson, of Otago University — on gloom in New Zealand poetry-which have already been heard by Otago jisteners. Other YC programmes starting next week are All Our Yesterdays (4YC, November 6), five talks on archaeology by John Golson of Auckland Uni"versity College, first heard from 1YC, and Platonic. Dialogues (4YC, Novem‘ber 6), seven programmes introduced by H. Hudson, of Victoria University College, which were first heard from 2YC. Two other series of wide appeal to start later next month are Sarah Campion’s My. Cambridge (3YC) and What is the Law? (2YC and 3YC), in which Professor A. G..Davis discusses such predicaments as trespass, libel and, disunity in marriage. Another series to be heard from 3YC will pass judgment on the greatest contemporary poet, novelist and playwright writing in English today.