3ZB ANNOUNCER GETS A BIG RISE

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 37, 24 February 1939, Page 12

3ZB ANNOUNCER GETS A BIG RISE

Record's

Christchurch Reporter)

FOR quite « while "Chiv" (E. A. Chivers), of 3ZB, Christchurch, had been looking for "a rise." He got it the other night when he presented what must be one of the most unusual broadcasts ever put over by a New Zealand radio station. For a long time he had been casting anmouncer’s eyes et a crane dominating Cothedral Square, Christchurch, and wondering just how a relay from the top of a 200ft. mest would go. Negotiations were slow, but eventually the stetion linked up with the Post and Telegraph Department, end the contractors, and it was agreed thet somebody, et his own risk, should go aloft. .

for many months the huge ‘gantry used in the building of part of the new post. office has been a striking silhouette on the skyline, and thousands have wondered what it would feel like to make an ascent, Station 3ZB chose a Friday night for the job and Mr. Chivers, suitably clothed, was the man who climbed it. Before the relay could be commenced, however, two members of the technical staff, Jim Younger and Roy Kennard, had toe climb skywards to fix the microphone cable, and they made a good job of it. Just before the. relay started Jack Bremner interviewed the contractor and told listeners a few facts about steel work, concrete work and such-like-all extremely interesting.

"Chiv" then climbed up to the platform from which the gigantic crane is worked, and was then carried in a box-like arrangement to the top of the mast. He told me tater that Madame Cara {one of 3ZB’s excursionists into prophecy) had assured him that he would get a rise this year, and he hoped the Cathedral Square job would "not be the only one! At anyrate up went "Chiv’" to 200ft., accompanied by a workman who chatted about "the. job" on the way. "The view of the city was magnificent and, in fact, more detailed than that from an aeroplane," Mr. Chivers told the "Record." "Motor-cars and tramcars looked like toys, and people like midgets. Was I frightened? Well, I admit I had the wind up a trifle, specially when I realised that the shingie-

box in which we were being hoisted had only three solid sides. It was all very eerie." Large Crowd © MEANTIME a large crowd had gathered in Cathedral Square and Hereford Street asking each other ‘‘What’s to do?’’, while three powerful spotlights were iocused on "Chiv" in his littie cage, It presented a weird scene at 9.40 p.m. And so "Chiv" talked blithely about this and that, with particular reference to his height and his sensations. The thousands listening received a further thrill when, after the announcer had deseribed what might be his fate if anything "gave," they heard a distinct crack, and the rejay went dead. There was no dull

and horrid thud, hewever; 32B merely crossed over to the studio. Actually all that happened was a break in the transmission cable, which became caught in the steelwork as the cage was coming down. Mr. Chivers was aloft for about ten minutes on this job which, for novelty, has only been equalled by Lionel Skeats’s climb up Speights’s tall chimney in Dunedin. The nastiest part came for the workman who had to retrieve the broken cable by climbing up the gantry through the framework; but such people do that kind of thing pefore breakfast, just aS an appetiser. . All told, it was a yery snappy piece of work.