"Cape Town Calling"

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 52, 13 July 1928, Page 2

"Cape Town Calling"

SCREENING DIFFICULTIES THREE STATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA T was on September 15, 1924, that broadcasting of the professional variety was born in Cape Town. Since that time a great deal has happened. Johannesburg was the first centre in South Africa to start real broadcasting; Cape Town came second shortly afterwards, and Durban made up the trio about a year later. There has always been friendly rivalry among the three st tions, for until last year, when the Afriean Broadcasting Company, with Mr. I. W. Seblesinger at the head, came along and took over the trio under one management, each station was under separate control. Competition was not altogether harmful. It prompted each station to look to its own laurels and blaze its own trail, Taking the three centres separately, one can truthfully say to-day that each station has made astonishing progress. With limited power and unlimited space, however, one can du little with three broadcasting stations, each separated from the nearest by something like 1600 miles. Thousands of South Afrieans have never heard real broadeasting. The radio problem of South Afric: is vast distances, scanty and scattered populations, and abnormal atmospherics. Three small stations working along different lines could never hope to serve the country adequately. Experts prophesied that it could never be done on a re:iunerative commercial basis; but then Mr. Schlesinger appeared on the scene. He believed it could be done. He formed a company and bought up éverything, lock, stock, and barrel, as a nucleus, Since that time he has been steadily moving. How exactly he intends to energise the isolated farmstead aerials from Namaqualand to Zululand with the necessary power to give intelligent speech, pure music, and "astatie" entertainment remains to be seen; but he has certainly made a beginning. Johannesburg is to have a super-station of 25 kw. ready within the next few months, and the old JB outfit will go to Bloemfontein. In 1924 2 wealthy citizen offered co "present the Mother City of the Union with a transmitting outfit, which the City Council refused. Those were hectic days. Everybody wanted wireless, but nobody would take on the broadcasting job. Suddenly there emerged certain courageou. individuals who, 1s heads of the Cape Peninsula Publicity Association, talked wireless from morning till night. Seeing a nov 1 medium through which to advertise "The Glori- ous Cape" afresh, they persuaded everybody that broadcasting should be done by them. The idea was generally accepted, and away they went. No profits were made and everyone rallied round to help. Our publie-spirited friend did not exactly make a present of the transmitter to the city, but he helped the ©.P.P.A. yery considerably by way of a substantial advance. It must be mentioned that the Cape Town Broadeasting Station is one of the comparatively few which never uses a lettered callsign. "Cape Town calling’ was the first call. It is still the call to-day. (APE TOWN, it must be remembered, nestles at the foot of Table Mountain, and is flanked on either side by Devyil’s Peak and Lion's Head. ‘The mountainous Peninsula running south

for foxty-iive miles lies behind the Table, so that a great part of the Peninsula is badly sereened from Cape | Town. Away to the north there is an unbroken view for forty miles across the Cape Flats (not a thickly populated area), and on the distant horizon the Hottentots Holland Afountains raise their peaks to the sky. Beyond is dorp land. So it will be seen that to house a transmitter in the city itself suggested a very limited range. for good reception. But it had to be done. The transmitter is at the top of a five-storied building on the main street, and there, after many months of experiment to find 2 suitable "earth," and eliminate screening from neighbouring ivon roofs, it settled down | to a steady radiation, which is now. more or less constant. Purity is studied before power. There are many listeners in the South Peninsula who get very poor reception, but this can-| not be remedied. Think for @ moment of 2 mountainous triangular Peninsula with a broadeasting station tucked away at one end. Draw a fifty-mile ring round Cape Town, and you will find three-quarters sea and one-quarter land, and most of that quarter is mountainous. That is Cape Town, where 99 per cent. of the total subseribers to the broadcast station are within the city and immediate vicinity. The area of this station, however, wherein listeners are called upon to pay, is much bigger than the whole of the British Isles, where there are twenty-odd stations. True, there is a zoning system-35s, per annum nearby, down to 2s. 6d. in the back o’ be-yond-but most people pay willingly. Several times the suggestion has been made to remove the Cape Town transmitter out on to the Cape Flats, but whether this would improve matters to such an extent as to warrant the expense is doubtful. If power were increased in so doing is another story. HE detailed working of the Cape Town studio is thoroughly as up-to-date. Transmissions have been as successful, as varied, and numerous as any station anywhere. The bulk of the spade work has fallen on the shoulders of the present studio director, Mr. R. 8S. Caprara, who is a remarkable genius*at his job, his righthand man, Mr. R: J. Borthwick (station engineer), "Aunty Lex,’ of the children’s hour, and the announcer, Captain Gordon Bird, who has earned the reputation of being the breeziest wit and cleverest announcer in Africa. These four have carried the burden. Things have changed with the adyent of the A.B.C., but in the minds of the old staff the problem is the same: How to improve programmes and transmission, to give a better service to those who get good reception, and to extend that service to the yast opeu spaces beyond the hills-Rhodes’s great Hinterland. ' While there was no money this vision was obscure, To-day, ‘with money, it is still obscure. We hove it will not be so fox long,