1ZM UNDER STATE CONTROL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 158, 6 July 1937, Page 6

IZM UNDER STATE CONTROL.

In. accordance "with the decision announced in the "Star ,, yesterday, control of radio station IZM has. been transferred from New Zealand Newspapers, Limited, to the Government. The immediate effect of the change is that the financial cost of maintaining the station, which in the main has been borne by the Company since March, 1934, will now be borne] by the listeners themselves. The Company was willing to continue its service to the listeners, whose appreciation of it has long been evident, but it considered that, in conformity with the Government's pre-election pledge, repeated more specifically in the Broadcasting Act of last year, IZM (and the other B class stations) should be subsidised. However, the Government is now confessedly more anxious to purchase the B stations than to subsidise them, and in fact none of them has even yet been offered a subsidy. The Government holds the conviction that no radio station should remain in private control, and it even vetoed a proposal that IZM should be operated by an association of listeners. This objection to private control is, in the case of IZM, purely a doctrinaire Socialist objection; lit has had no basis in experience. Listeners are well aware that IZM, when under the Company's control, was never made the mouthpiece of political propaganda, and the station director, Mr. W. W. Eodgers, has testified that he was given the maximum of freedom in' his programme building. It is therefore difficult to see in what way the change in control of the station will benefit the listeners. TJiere is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the Minister's assurance that the individuality of the station will be preserved, but to the fulfilment of the assurance there are practical obstacles, inherent in any system of State control, but particularly formidable when that control is exercised over the expression of op'nion. The experiment will be watched with sympathetic interest, and of its outcome the listeners will be the judges.