Women's Your Work is never done

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1051, 16 October 1959, Page 6

Women's Your Work

is never done

OULD-BE recruits to the Commercial Division’s Women’s Hours often think of this as a glamorous and easy career, an hour’s pleasant chatter and perhaps another hour to prepare the programme. "I often see these people," said Elsie Lloyd, the Supervisor of these sessions, "and as I tell them what they will have to do for a test recording, I see their faces drop. Many of them don’t even try the test. They simply hadn’t realised the demands made upon the personalities of the Women’s Hours; few of my girls dare let the pressure off for a moment." Preparing an hour's broadcasting every day is a full-time iob for these 14 girls. They record interviews, prepare documentary programmes, arrange discussion groups and housewives’ quizzes, and edit material. And each day they visit advertisers to collect the latest information about the shopping scene. There are some programmes supplied by Head Office, as well as a daily feature, but most of the material the girls must find themselves. The everyday tasks of the girls came into closer focus after a day spent with Doreen Kelso at 2ZB, a routine day which began at 8.0 a.m., but was complicated when it was learnt that the Shopping Reporter had flu and Doreen would have to take her session-Merrin Craike, who was being trained for work in Women’s Hour, would collect Shopping Reporter copy for the next day. Doreen checked the list of advertisers and the copy ready for the session. She also timed an interview with some visiting show people made the night before, and received notice of another one Mrs Lloyd had made that was to be broadcast that day. At nine o’clock she went out to collect the advertising material for her

own session, seeing for herself the special offers and new merchandise she would be advertising. By ten o’clock she had to be back in the studio, to record an interview. It was briefer than usual, so there was time for a cup of coffee while she opened her mail before the next interview at 10.30. This lasted a full half-hour, while an army officer

spoke about the problems of new recruits. Doreen still had more copy to collect, and all the day’s copy to type, before she entered the studio at 11.26 for the Shopping Reporter’s Session. She emerged a half-hour | later with a dry throat and a pouf of relief-it had been some time since she had to talk solidly for a half-hour’s broadcast.

After lunch Doreen began by typing the next day’s programme in triplicate, including the copy for the technician. After a search for the appropriate music to play with the interviews planned for the day after next, she made the preliminary draft for that programme, filling in the times for the interviews, the feature, and the commercials against each minute of the hour. The copy, tapes and music were placed with the schedule in a folder for each day with today’s on her desk, ready to go on the air. Doreen checked Merrin’s progress on the copy she had been collecting, and told Merrin that some people were expected in the studio at 3.0 p.m. for a live interview; Merrin was to bring them in. At 2.25 Doreen took the material to the studio and the control room; a piece of copy was changed by a last minute telephone call from a sponsor. In the studio the seconds jerked past on the electric clock. The session came on the air; "Good afternoon . . ." As each item was broadcast, the sheet with the information was laid aside, the schedule ticked. Beyond the big glass windows a housewife sat watching the broadcast, her basket by her feet. While the tapes were being played, Doreen looked over the programme material, and joked with Merrin. The people to be interviewed arrived. During the feature they were brought into the studio, arranged near the microphone, their voices tested for balance in the controlroom, and preliminary questions were asked, so that Doreen had some idea of the things to bring out in the interview. The studio went back on the air and for the next few minutes Doreen worked from her copy, while the others sat in silence, the only other noise in the room the faint whirring of the air-con-ditioner. The interview began, the

visitors gesturing their explanations, talking to Doreen and appearing quite unaware of the microphone. Then came the final announcements and the session was over for the day. Usually an interview has been arranged for after the session, but on this day Doreen was free to follow up her mail, make appointments, enter new programme schedules for the future months, and answer a telephone which rings ceaselessly. This routine, full as it is, seemed heaven to Val Griffith of 2XN, when she did a relieving stint. Instead of 12 to 15 advertisers each day she has 25 to 28, and it takes her more than half her day to see all her clients. "From Monday morning to Friday afternoon I work flat out for the Broadcasting Service," she said, "I usually think of my programmes in bed, at dead of night, or when cycling to work, or when making my shopping-reporter calls, and I’m always practising the words I find difficult to say. Time is the allimportant factor; I haven’t a spare minute, and I use my bike to go from shop to shop. "There’s no spare half an hour or so for finding-your-feet chatter with an interviewee, I plan the questions beforehand, sit the ‘interviewee at the microphone, whizz through a technical test and rush her (or him) through the

programme, and pick up the tape from the technician. Yet in between these interviews at the station and the hours when she is on the air and the calls at the shops, Val, like all the girls, finds time to go out for special programmes. "We don’t get many visiting celebrities here," she siad, "but we’re lucky in Nelson with such a large province to cover and so many things to give different angles. The little L2B portable tape-recorder, although the technicians regard it as the devil’s handiwork, is a godsend as I can cart it all over the place on bike, in car, on boat and on foot. I’ve been out in the pilot launch, climbing the rope ladder with the recorder slung over my back, and I took it to sea for a weekend round the Tasman National Park coastline, getting interviews in the cool of the evening with moreporks calling in. the background, It went with me

deep inside a coalmine, but the interview was ruined because we got talking earthquakes and I suddenly remembered I hated caves and that this very mine had caved in with the big Murchison earthquake. "Another day I recorded the Women’s Hour, and set out in the car at 5.0 a.m., gathered an interview from a drover on the Takaka Hill at seven in the dusky dawn, and once in Takaka’ went from arranged interview to arranged interview until 6.0 p.m. I saw the Pupu Springs (biggest in the world); Mrs McCallum, who feeds the eels; a dairy farm, a dairy factory, and the Golden Bay Cement works. I came home with 11 programmes and breathed a sigh of relief when I wrote in my daily programme book ‘Travels in Takaka’ -for eleven Thursdays*in a row." Everything a Women’s Hour personality does can make material for a programme. Valerie Austin took listeners

with her on her flying lessons, and Molly McNab brought back two programmes made on a whaler in her annual holidays. In bringing back their programmes the girls have learned to cope with sea-sickness, floods and fires, and even the difficulties of interviewing visitors whose English is limited, or non-existent. Mrs Lloyd remembers the time she had a studio of boys all grin. ning at her in Fijian, a dead loss on the air until she asked them to sing. Wherever they go, these girls take their sessions with them, always alive to possibilities for a programme. Their work can be pleasant or exciting; it can be routine, or bitterly disappointing, as when a long-promised and important visitor for a live interview does -not arrive. The girls have to be able to cope with this and all other emergencies without showing any strain or impatience. Above all, they must be interested in people, 24 hours a day,