Broadcasting.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20610, 28 July 1932, Page 8

Broadcasting.

Tho report of the Broadcast Coverage Commission, summarised in The Press yesterday, points the way to some useful reforms in New Zealand's broadcasting system; and it is encouraging to find that the Broadcasting Board is anxious to carry out some of the recommendations without delay. The most noticeable defect in tho present system is, of course, the unequal services given to country listeners. In part this is due to the fact that three of the YA stations, being in crowded urban areas, are subjected to much interference from trams, buildings, and electrical installations. Near Christchurch and Dunedin, fortunately, there are high peninsulas which, owing to the superior conductivity of sea for ground rays, offer exceptionally good opportunities to improve transmission, particularly to coastal and semi-coastal areas. Other districts, such as that round Invercargill, are badly served, mainly because they are remote from broadeasting centres —a disadvantage which the Commission suggests may be overcome by erecting relay stations, The Broadcasting Board has also accepted the Commission's very sensible suggestion that 2YA (Wellington) should be regarded as a " quasi-national" station and so increased in power as to furnish a means of emergency communication with the greater part of the country. As the British Government found in 1926, such a plant can be of immense value in a time of national crisis. Now that the technical side of broadcasting in New Zealand has been so exhaustively and competently dealt with, it is to be hoped that the Board will turn its attention very seriously to an equally pressing and far more difficult problem, that of providing good programmes. The Board itself is as weak on the artistic and eflucational' side as it is strong on the technical side and it should therefore lose no opportunity of seeking and using tjie help of men and women who will be able to suggest a more intelligent use of the potent tialities of broadcasting. The advisory councils which have been appointed will of course be consulted and may give good advice; but they seem on the whole to bo much better qualified to | advise on technical than on artistic and educational questions.

The Unemployment Board and the Hospital Boards, At the meeting of the Citizens' Relief Association on Tuesday a request for support in calling upon the Unemployment Board to define its relief policy waa refused, largely on tho ground that the request was "purely " a political move." In a statement published this morning the Mayor replies to the charge. It is a pity that he is not content with giving tho firm and plain answer that he does give, but goes on to sharpen it into u political and by no weans impersonal

retort; but more than that need not be said. What is relevant and important is the fact that a representative conference of interested local bodies asked the Board to explain its relief policy, which was obscure and is still obscure, especially in regard to the division of responsibility between the Board itself and the Hospital Boards. When no satisfactory answer was received, the request was renewed; and the reasons why it should bo, and why it deserves the support of every temporary or permanent relief body, are as obvious as its political motive is undiscoverable. It seems to have been forgotten on Tuesday night that the request was not the Mayor's — much less that of the member for Avon —though even if it had been it should still have been recognised as legitimate and necessary. It was, however, that of a representative and responsible conference, whose manner of addressing a Board which sometimes seems deaf as well as dumb was as much to be commended as its motive.