VOA is 15 Years Old

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 916, 1 March 1957, Page 10

VOA is 15 Years Old

HE letters VOA after a programme are now familiar to listeners all over New Zealand, for the Transcription Service of Voice of America has made available free of charge, hundreds of prozrammes ranging from light music and jazz to drama and the classics. VOA is this year celebrating its fifteenth birthday and the most effective tribute to this organisation whose growth from one small studio in 1942 has_ been phenomenal, is simply to look back over the years and recall some of the outstanding broadcasts made available to New Zealand audiences. First and foremost must come variety, for it was through their variety shows that VOA first captured a New Zealand audience. During the war the American ‘Armed Services’ Station at 1ZM, Auckland, attracted: listeners from the more staid New Zealand stations largely because it was broadcasting some of the best of American variety. These shows were soon to be heard from the NZBS. There was the Bing Crosby Show which was to include stars such as Bob Crosby, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland and Rosemary Clooney. Bob Hope, Perry Como and Jack Smith shone in their ‘own firmament and those who listened to the famous violin duet between Jascha Heifetz and Jack Benney will vote it one of the funniest radio sequences ever heard. Light music also attracted a wide audience-John Charles Thomas was at the height of his popularity, and there was plenty of folk music, Negro spirituals and music from Tin Pan Alley. Jazz listeners were soon to thank VOA for Leonard Feather’s Jazz Club U.S.A. which kept them in touch with the contemporary scene and since then World of Jazz has been doing the same thing.

The great American symphony orchestras’ special programmes, often enterprising in their choice of items, included some from the Boston Symphony under Koussevitsky, the NBC under Toscanini and from the’ Louisville Symphony, a smaller orchestra specialising in modern works and now playing in the Music from Oversea programme. From the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, thave come Metropolitan Auditions of the Air where the best of America’s young singers competed for positions with the famous Opera House. These were remarkable for the quality of the talent they revealed. New Zealand listeners have heard as well many fine operatic performances, Last year there were Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Marriage of Figaro, and during this year The Barber of Seville, La Gioconda and La Traviata will come here on VOA tapes. There has been less spoken material than music but Theatre Guild of the Air has given some modern plays, sometimes with the original casts, among them The Third Man, The Hasty Heart and Trilby. In 1955 Malcolm Rickard, Supervisor of Programme Organisation, National Division, visited the VOA studios in Washington. "I was surprised to find everything on so large a scale," he said. "They had a great knowledge of New Zealand and were very interested in our broadcasting system. They had 14 specially designed studios and broad--casting went on day and night. The Transcription side of their work is now taking second place to Iron Curtain broadcasts." Listeners can still look forward however, to many fine programmes from VOA which during its fifteen years has provided a unique free Transcription Service to broadcasting systems in many lands.