Passing Pageant

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 29, 30 December 1938, Page 10

Passing

Pageant

by4

Trevor

Lane

K Three and a half million pounds a year flow into the coffers of the British Broadcasting Corporation ... and yet this huge concern is hard pushed to make ends meet... read what Trevor Lane has to say to-day about television in London and the radio service in South Africa. }

*« HEN Lady Louis Mountbatten visited New Zealand a few years ago, I asked her if she had been partieularly impressed by any~thing in this part of the world. 7 ‘Ves,’ she said. ‘‘It may only seem a small thing, but the cheerful music which is broadcast by the Australian and New Zealand radio stations early im the morning is something which I like immensely. Why can’t we have the same in England?’’ Da iw London I met Sir Stephen Tallents, of the British . Broadcasting Corporation, and. I told him of Lady Louis’s remark. ‘‘I don’t think Englishmen would appreciate musical comedy with their breakfast,’’ he said. ‘‘Australians and New Zealanders are different.’’ With which I heartily disagree, Listeners, like human nature, are fundamentally the same the world over. I found the same grouches about radio programmes in _ London and Capetown, Paris

and Bombay, as I heard in Melbourne and Perth and Auckland. A RADIO official 1 met in South Africa agreed’ with Sir Stephen Tallents . .. he said South Africans would object to jazz bands with their bacon and eggs. The radio editor of a big Capetown paper said the official was talking through his hat-every day the paper had letters asking why South Africa had no early broadeasts; why listeners were forced to tune into a foreign station at Lourenco Marques for breakfast music. In both England and South Africa, where radio starts its day at 10 am., I was loud in my praise of the excellent breakfast sessions provided by all the radio stations in the

Antipodes. I refuse to see any logic in the suggestion that, because Australians liked radio with their breakfast, Englishmen wouldn’t. It seemed as reasonable to assume that, because Americans and New Zealanders and Chinamen liked Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on the sereen, Frenchmen and Irishmen and Seandinavians wouldn’t. * UT the BBC has more worries at the moment than the question of early morning broadcasts.. Two biggest drains on the finances of the giant corporation are E'mpire services and television. Ten years ago, when tt was first suggested that the BBC might transmit shortwave broadcasts to the Empire, the Dominion Prime Ministers, m

London for aw Imperial Conference, were approached for contributions. They promised to think the matter over, * [8 the meantime the BBC went ahead with an experimental service costing a modest £250 a year. The depression came along.and the Dominions wrote hurriedly to London... they regretted that the financial situation made it impossible for them to contribute. Nevertheless, the BBC continued to expand the service, the growing cost of which was met out of the British listeners’ licence fees. Today the Empire broadeasts from Daventry cost £250,000 a year and the stations are the most powerful in the world. The British Government contributes. a fairish sum of KE.

money, but the Dominions still -eontribute nothing. ‘However, Empire broadeasting today has a force and significance far beyond its value as an entertainment medjum. Every day, powerful transmitters in Germany, Italy, Russia are pouring out propa--ganda-and Britain must keep her place in this subversive race, too. _ JN television the BBC has hatched an even greedier chick. In fact, I was told by an important broadcasting

a. | official in Liondon that, if there is one thing that will force the corporation into broadcasting eommercial programmes, it is television. © Beneath the single grotesque mast at Alexandra Palace fie television studios and laboratories that eat up money as quickly and easily as a eat laps up cream. Bui there is one great satisfaction-the British system is far in advance of anything else in the world, and the London studios are the only

var ones sending out daily television programmes. M ] SPENT several days at the studios at Alexandra Palace and I was astounded at the progress made in this newest science. Television is not only HERE, but it is as perfect as the talking picture you see at the newest luxury cinema-and usually far more interesting. . Television has made British radio manufacturers as apprehensive as a Jew at a Nazi picnic. Each one is turning out a wary number -of television sets, expecting at any moment that some new and startling advance will make present equipment obsolete. .

1 London publie is taking a long time to become television-minded. I have met people in Kensington and Surbiton who still do not believe that television is an accomplished.fact, despite details of programmes published in the daily papers and the notices ‘displayed in the big stores and hotels: Television Broadcasts Daily. The price of a set is another stumbling block--there are few reliable ones below forty guineas. ,

Ordinary ‘programmes are being pinched, for every penny must go into the maw of this lusty infant. The BBC’s summer schedule is the lowest-priced on record -big and expensive sturs have been jettisoned, records are being used to an increasing degree, new talent, more interest in getting on the air than in the fee tt receives, is being given its chance, outdoor broadcasts, novel and cheap, figure largely.

: gir JOUN REITH told the Government plainly that, untess extra finanee was forthcoming, the BBC would be forced to emulate the amazingly popular advertising stations, Radio Luxemboure and Radio Normandie, and ‘‘go commercial," He pointed out, too, that radio propaganda to the Empire was as much a part of the rearmament programme as the building of battleships and the training of soldiers, * JN its struggle to maintain its radio service on the same high plane as the BBO, South Africa is discovering that--in broadcasting, any-way-you can’t make one pound do the work of two. Until quite recently the African service was privately owned. Sir John Reith was. invited to pay a visit and report on a suitable national service for the Union. He drew up a 20,000-word report suggesting a broadcasting system modelied on the lines of the BBC. But the South African National Broadcasting Service has no dictatorial Reith to guide it. It has all the lofty ideals and proud

maxims of the British corporation, but it has not the money, the inspiration or the talent to advance them. * URING my stay in Africa I listened in daily to the radio stations. in Capetown, Durban and Johannesburg and J came to the conelusion that South African broadeasting today is where Australian broadcasting was eight or nine years F I could not get rid of the impression that I was listening ' to programmes that had been | tiurriedly improvised because the big stars of the evening had failed to turn up. There is a lack of cohesion and finish about the programmes. Interesting items are _, often buried under a mass of junk. , Broadeasting in Afriea is like a newspaper which has international news, social gossip, gardening notes and Ietters to the editor heaped willy-nilly on one page. UE announcers take them- ) selvés as seriously as im- » portant BBC officials, which might be forgiven tf the programmes came within coo-ee ; of the London broadcasts. Bul they don’t--in fact, any littl: country station in AusLat onal

tralia can give its Listeners a betier programme than 1s broadcast on an average day from Capetown ov Durban. South Africans, with the exception of the wewscr element that one finds anywhere, are as jolly and good-hearted as Australians and New Zeolanders, but their radio programmes reflect none of the spontaneity of their splendid country. OW much better, in my opinion, if they had left Sir John Reith in his sanetum at Broadeasting House, London,

and worked out a radio service for themselves, a service suited to the temperament and environment of the people. Another tremendous problem in South African radio is the use of both English and Afri-

kaans. Every station in the Union makes its announcements in both languages, and a good deal of time is necessarily taken up in the process. In Capetown there are two broadcasting stations, both transmitting the same programme

except that the announcéments from one are in English and from ‘the other in Afrikaans. But the South African listener, fully aware that his country’s programmes are not worldbeaters, has one consolation, If he owns a shortwave set--and

most of them do-he ean pick up the majority o"° the European broadeasts perfecily. * HEN TI was in VV South Africa a few months ago there was a young American there whose arrival was breaking as much space in the newspapers as a Royal visit. His name? Larry Adler, wizard of the mouth-organ! He played his little instrument in every big town in the Union and was a tremendous success everywhere. * AND then, lured -by something fat in the way of contracts from the Australian entrepreneur, ' Frank Weil,, and the ‘Australian Broadcasting Commission, Larry Adler journeyed on to Sydney and is now something of a minor riot there. Said Sir Benjamin Fuller, "‘Even on the night of the big storm last week the Sydney Tivoli was packed, thanks to the drawing power of Larry Adler.’’ a

Now the suggestion is that Adler should come on to New Zealand provided broadcasts as well as stage appearances can be arranged. © Personally mouth-organ experts leave me rather cold, but musie dealers say that Larry Adler’s records sell like hot cakes. It would be interesting to have him here in the flesh-we | all know his broadeast records well. Perhaps Frank Neil and — the. broadcasting people ~ here will be able to come to some | arrangement ? a

ee | L I8 possible-you’ll be sorry to hear-that the wonderful Covent Garden Russian Ballet Company, now playing to colossal business at the Sydney Theatre Royal, may not come to New Zealand after all. The cost of maintaining this company ts terrific and there have to be thousands of one-quinea seats sold: every week to cover the . expenses. HE much-discussed. American play, ‘‘The Women,’’ which was condemned by an Australian paper as ‘ ‘degrading, immoral, salacious,’’ is now in its tenth week in Melbourne and is continuing: to prove the most popular attraction in the Victorian.

capital. ‘There are forty women in the cast and not one man! The other American show in Melbourne, ‘‘I Married an Angel,’’ isn 7 attracting as much business as ‘‘The Women,’ but it is doing quite nicely. . LETTER the other-day from a man in Nelson asking if I would make a mention of Dougias Read’s book, ‘‘Insanity Fair.’’ He writes: ‘"Could

you, on behalf of common sense and humanity, draw attention to a book circulating in New Zealand ealled ‘Insanity Fair’? ‘‘To my mind this is the best exposure of how wars, simplicity (of English politicians) and saerifiee of human lives are juggled. I eonsider that if everybody in the present-day crazy world were allowed to read this classic, wars would not oceur. If you have read this book, what do you think?’’ * VES, I have read Douglas Read’s book--I read it on the long sea voyage from England to the Cape-and I, too, consider it a fine piece of anti-war propaganda. Read knows his Europe and he knows the peccadilloes of dictators and their kind. =" — If you have a chance get hold of ‘‘Insanity Fair’’it’s a yarn to make you think ... depressing, maybe, but we’ve got to cease being afraid of the truth. « Which brings to mind a paragraph in.a letter from an English friend lying on my desk this morning. It was written during the height of the Jewish pogroms: ‘‘Well, I hope Chamberlain feels. proud of his friend Hitler now! What brutality .and robbery! What on.carth can be done?’"? _ I think you’ll ‘agree that there is a steady awakening of the people themselves to the dangers of leaving world affairs to a handful of poli-