STATION 2ZW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 946, 27 September 1957, Page 11

STATION 2ZW

Sir.-My attention has been drawn to an article in the September 6 issue of The Listener in which Aunt Daisy refers to "Nimmo’s Station 2ZW ... [as] ...a small private concern whose main purpose was to encourage the sale of wireless sets." For record purposes may I be granted space to correct this assertion? First, 2ZW was not "Nimmo’s." The licence for this station was held by the writer who, in conjunction with Mr A. E. Rolfe (New Zealand Manager for the Australasian Performing Right Association), and the late Mr Byron Brown, arranged for the purchase of the 2ZW transmitter from Messrs Collier and Beale, Ltd., which was to be located on the premises of the Bristol] Piano Company, Ltd., Wellington, and operated in conjunction with that firm. Prior to this arrangement being given effect to, however, a syndicate was formed comprised of the following leading Wellington business men: Messrs Byron Brown, W. R. Kemball, H. F. Wood, Cyril Brice, W. J. Mason and R. H. and A. J. Nimmo; and it was this syndicate, which subsequently became the 2ZW Broadcasting Service Ltd., that was operating 2ZW at the time Aunt Daisy refers to, the trans- mitter being located, for technical reasons, in Nimmo’s Building. The personnel of the 2ZW Broadcasting Service Ltd., and the fact that the station was at that time the second most powerful in the Dominion, is a sufficient answer to the assertion that it was "a small private concern." As regards the assertion that "its main purpose was to encourage the sale of wireless sets," this was far from being the case, 2ZW came into being to crystallise a definite conception of radio by its founders as a public utility. It explored and exploited a range of broadcasting possibilities that only an unfettered missionary zeal could initiate and sustain. Apart from its innovations in the matters of programmes and _ incidental services not the least valuable work of 2ZW was its active &-operation with the various relief organisations in Wellington for the purpose of raising funds, foodstuffs, clothing, etc., for the unemployed and needy (the station operated throughout the depression years). It was responsible for reopening the Children’s Health Camps when they were closed for lack of finance and equipment; it founded the Smith Family Joyspreaders Inc., whose members are all anonymous, and which has ex- pended many thousands of pounds in providing assistance to deserving families and particularly to ailing mothers; it was the unofficial almoner to the Government during the depression; it inaugurated the milk-in-schools movement and raised the funds necessary to provide milk for the children in Wellington schools prior to the Government instituting the national scheme; it was the first to broadcast programmes on short-wave from New Zealand, operating in conjunction with the Western Electric Co., Ltd. (Station 2ZX).

In view of this, and many other intimate, vital and practical innovations by this popular pioneer in radio broadcasting in New Zealand, it is fitting and proper that some visual record should appear in New Zealand’s only national publication to correct any impression that 2ZW was only "a small private concern," brought into being for the main purpose of selling radio sets.

L. E.

STRACHAN

(Gisborne).

("Mr Heigh-Ho" of 2ZW). (In fairness to Aunt Daisy we must explain that the information about 2ZW was obtained from another source and checked in Wellington. We are very glad to have Mr Strachan’s fuller and more accurate statement. But it should be pointed out that the reference he seeks to correct was followed ec 4 this sentence: "It had a large following of om was 2YA’s main local competitor."-