LISTENING IN TO THE OLYMPICS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 889, 17 August 1956, Page 5

LISTENING IN TO THE OLYMPICS

‘HE Minister in Charge of Broadcasting, the Hon. R. M. Algie, at the weekend made a statement on NZBS plans to cover the Olympic Games at Melbourne in late November and early December. The plans include exclusive use of an Australian transmitter to broadcast commentaries and _ reports from New Zealand and other Englishspeaking Games commentators. Broadcasts from the station-VLR, Melbourne -will be beamed to Makara Radio, and relayed by New Zealand stations. Many events will be broadcast "live" by Main National Stations while they are actually taking place, and others will be covered by eye-witness reports. Delayed commentaries will be broadcast where two or more events of wide interest to New Zealand listeners are being held at the same time. Broadcasts from Commercial stations will include digest programmes and results summaries, as well as some direct commentaries. The Head Office Sports Officer, Lance Cross, told The Listener this week that the Australian Broadcasting Commission had made available to the NZBS two small strdios in the Broadcasting Centre at’ the main Olympic stadium and four relay lines daily from any four sports arenas chosen by the NZBS, The ABC line carrying Games programmes will also feed into the studios, Technicians for the small studios (which will contain recording and editing facilities), for Station VLR, and at the four relay points, and. a shorthand ‘typist and typing facilities, will be provided by

the ABC, In return for the use of the transmitter and other facilities, for which no charge is being made, the NZBS has undertaken to provide a continuous transmission from Station VLR even when Olympic programmes are not being broadcast. Ags announced by the Minister, New Zealand, with other English speaking countries, will contribute to a pool of Olympic programmes and so wili have the right, for example, to make use of commentaries by BBC broadcasters as well as commentaries for the ABC home service. "The whole of the second floor of the new stand at the main Olympic stadium will be occupied by small studios into which lines from other grounds will be fed," Mr. Cross said. "Altogether 43 countries will be represented by a broadcasting staff of ‘about 140, and although other countries will have time rationed on Australia’s overseas transmitters, we’ve been told that the BBC, for example, will be sending a

team of 12, including ‘two television. representatives. Among other broadcasting teams, Japan will send 10, the United States six, Korea, Holland and Rumania five each,. Czechoslovakia four, Holland and Indonesia three each, and South Africa two." Mr. Cross said that commentators at the main stadium would be accommo‘dated on top of the main stand-an excellent position overlooking the finishing line and giving a good view of the main straight and the whole arena. "Commentators, each with a technician alongside him, will be equipped with lip microphones, so that there’s very little chance that one man’s commentary will be heard on his neighbour’s line. However, just to make sure that hi interference of that sort is not a

distraction, either to the commentators or to listeners, English-speaking »radio reporters will be separated from one another by foreign language reporters.

‘Official results-judges’ placings, times, and so on-will be flashed to commentators on a television screen. Crowd effects from all grounds will be fed into the studios and controlled by the technician sitting alongside the commentator." Mr. Cross, who is well known to listeners as a cricket commentator, and as one of the team which in the 1953-54 Summer broadcast from the Wellington

Post Office a ball-by-ball commentary on the cricket Tests between New Zealand and South Africa, will lead the NZBS team of five to cover the Games. Other members of the team will be Brian Russ, Senior Sports Announcer at Wellington, and formerly District Sports Officer at Dunedin; Bob Irvine, Announcer-in-Charge at 2ZA, who was heard in commentaries on games played against the Springboks at Palmerston North, Wellington and Masterton; Ashley .Lewis, Programme Officer, Head Office, formerly of Christchurch, and a member of the mobile NZBS Royal Tour team; and Winston McCarthy, commentator under contract to the NZBS, who, with Lance Cross, covered the Vancouver Empire Games for New Zealand listeners,

oe ror tliat Letters from Listeners will be found this week on pages 18 and 19