WHAT OF N.Z. TALENT?

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 31, 8 February 1935, Page 5

WHAT OF N.Z. TALENT?

ON page 14 in to-day’s paper is a story dealing with the engagement by the New Zealand Broadcasting Board of several New Zealand and overseas artists for broadcasts from the national stations. This selection should quieten some of those critics who are constantly inferring that New Zealand talent is being deliberately passed by. The Broadcasting Board is willing and eager to give a hearing to those New Zealanders who consider themselves capable of giving broadcasts, and, in the past year or two. hundreds of auditions have been given to aspiring artists. But the board has a standard to maintain, and in New Zealand, as elsewhere, it is only a very small proportion of budding performers whose work is suitable for the air. And, because of the high standard of recordings broadcast in the Dominion it would probably be the people who write of the "‘deplorable lack of local talent on the air’ who would be the first to complain and criticise if the national stations gave every local Galli Curci and Kreisler carte blanche at the microphone. It is only by importing artists and carefully selecting the talent available in the country that the board is going to maintain the quality of the broadcasts and, at the same time, point the way to those young people who one day aspire to a position in front of a "‘mike."