I Repeat, About Repeats

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 916, 1 March 1957, Page 20

I Repeat, About Repeats

LL through the summer YC talks have been mostly repeats of old series; for so long, in fact, that I begin to suspect not an accidental stop-gap so much. as a Policy. Either way, I don’t like it. By all means (as I have said before) have repeats, but let them be judiciously spaced among new material, not bunched all at once without relief, These have often been estimable talks, but after so long listening to little that has not been heard before, the announcement of a talk tends to provoke sighs rather than expectationespecially as so many of them have been of the same type, the social problem type. Of course, I’m desperately concerned about the Hydrogen Bomb, the Welfare State, the Changing South Pacific; but not exclusively concerned with them. If listeners are considered to be too frivolous in the summertime to listen to new talks of this kind they’re not likely to listen more willingly to repeats of them. It would be better to have new talks neither thoughtprovoking nor conscience-accusing. It would be better still not to suppose that we only take up social concern with steam pudding in the winter or put on giddy thoughts with pictorial shirts in the summer. Let there be a sensible variation throughout the year, and repeats among them.