Broadcasting

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24677, 21 September 1945, Page 4

Broadcasting

The financial summary given in the annual report of the National Broadcasting Service on the national stations is this year reduced to the bare statement that revenue from licence fees totalled £435,813, from “ Listener ” sales and advertising charges £39,(.'25, and from interest £23,695; and that £170,000 was invested during the year to “ provide “ for future development and to overtake arrears of construction " and equipment ”, bringing the total of these investments to £1,570,000. For further information, as last year, the reader is referred to Part IV of the Public Accounts, not yet available; but last year the summary gave not only classified revenue figures but total and classified expenditure figures, including programmes (£101,846), operation of stations (£69,880), administration (£44,864), “Listener” (£ 27,319), and depreciation (£29,082), leaving £227,311 as surplus, of which £220,000 was invested. Whether these figures have been omitted this y.ear to save paper and printing costs, or because they were forgotten, or because they were thought uninteresting, or because they have excited too interest, it is impossible to say. What can be said, with emphasis, is that they ought to be there. Without them, we cannot amuse ourselves by reckoning again, for listeners’ benefit, the precise, small proportion of their licence fee that spent on the programmes they buy the right to hear. It is not likely to have varied very much from the previous year, when it was 6s out of 255. Without the figures, again, it can only be hazarded that the 1943-44 allocation of 13s out of 25s to investment fell towards a mere 10s in 1944-45. Listeners may judge for themselves whether it is necessary to modify the opinion, often expressed here, that they get too tittle back for their money to-day and that too much of it is held against tomorrow’s capital needs. If listeners get too little back for their money, one reason is that the National Broadcasting Service does not deserve to be called “ national The report repeats the boast of an “ established policy ” of encouraging New Zealand talent and supports it statistically by recording that 2767 broadcasts were given by “ local

“artists” during the year and 589 recitals by local musical societies, choirs, and bands. These 3327 performances may have taken 2000 hours; the transmission time of all stations, national and commercial, was 80,000. “A reasonable standard “ of performance ” was required, of course. (Not ail the recorded items satisfy such a standard, nor all the performances by artists not “ local ”.) It is probably true that some of the 2767 and some of the 560 were too leniently admitted to the studios. But if it is true, and true of 10, or 20, or 40 per cent., it does not follow that the National Broadcasting Service has done jts wise, generous, enterprising best to " en- “ courage local talent ” and can do no better than so sad a result would suggest. Standards are upheld by paying really good fees for first-class work, which means paying for the time and effoi’t to make it first-class. Such fees are too rarely paid. Standards are raised high and kept high by systematic action to engage individuals, chamber music groups, and larger combinations on planned programme contracts, not by accepting proposals that may be submitted from time to time. What musician will say that the best use is made of any of the permanent musical resources of the service, or that it is possible to see evidence of any sustained effort to strengthen them? But the plainest betrayal of want of intelligent enterprise in the service appears in another field, Throughout the war, New Zealand commentators on current affairs have been unheard; those of the 8.8.C. and KWIX, San Francisco, have monopolised the national air. Again, the N.B.S. has fulsomely congratulated itself and listeners on the 8.8.C. “ Brains Trust ” series. They are good, bad, and indifferent. But has New Zealand no brains to trust?