The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1946. N.B.S.

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24983, 18 September 1946, Page 6

The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1946. N.B.S.

The annual report of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service for the year ended March 31, 1946, records once more a working surplus (£204,184) far greater than the amount spent on programmes (£116,177). The surplus was only £ 50,000 less than the amount spent on programmes and over-all administration (£256,500); and the amount invested during the year (£260,000) slightly exceeded this gioss total. The invested reserves now amount to £1,830,000, earmarked, in the stereotyped phrase of the N.B.S. reports, “for future “ development and to overtake ar- “ rears of construction and replace- “ ment of equipment and, the report laments in another reference, if building, plant, and equipment costs stand at present levels, “ the expansion programme to be “ undertaken by the Service will “ involve a greater expenditure “than can be met by the present “ reserve fund ”. There is no need to repine, however. Within 10 years, at the established rate of profiteering, jthe N.B.S. will have £5,000,000 to work on, if listeners remain content to pay 25s and receive 6s back in programmes, or 12s 6d in programmes and administration combined.

The N.B.S. is to be charged with worse than the error of believing that the listeners of one five-year or 10-year period' should provide the capital, debt-free, to rebuild and re-equip its establishment for the next two decades. The N.B.S wants enterprise and imagination and courage. The extent, whatever it is, to which the deficiency is due to political control makes no difference to the fact. It is a fact It can be demonstrated and illustrated in many ways. Three will do. The report refers, fairly enough, to the great demands of the war effort on the service; and it may be fairly acknowledged that they were in many .ways well met. But the report mentions specifically, not only the news bulletins but the '■ commentaries and talks ” by which listeners were kept accurately and promptly informed. New Zealand listeners heard no (regular) commentaries from New Zealand broadcasters. Their work on the news side of the programmes was discontinued as soon as the war broke out. This was a timid, dull, unnecessary decision. Security, perhaps, was the official reason. Security, in fact, rightly considered, provided the best of reasons for organising the best possible staff of New Zealand commentators. Timidity and dullness went so far that a broadcast in the Winter Talks series on the geography rf the Pacific—a broad treatment of the subject by the country’s leading geographer—was cancelled at short notice for fear the Japanese might overhear—

what, of military significance, that they had not spent 20 years in learning?

There were no New Zealand

commentators capable of doing this work, it may have been officially supposed. If it was supposed, it was wrongly supposed, just as, it is to be hoped, it would have been wrong to suppose that the N. 8.5., the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force could not have assembled the supervisors capable of censoring scripts. There is, unhappily, something to indicate that the N.B.S. consistently underestimates the intellectual resources of this country. It bought and boosted the 8.8.C.’s Brains Trust series. The 8.8. C. devised an excellent programme feature, which was worth imitating as well as borrowing. If it is suggested that New Zealand life has not enough wit, information, and versatility to form at least four Brains Trusts, for an experimental series, the suggestion will be mocked, or should be, from the Trades Hall to the University. (We nominate one trust: Professor Gordon, Mr George English, Miss Ngaio Marsh, and Mr lan Donnelly.) There is no evidence that the N.B.S. has tried to find a Brains Trust, or thought of trying to find one. It needs jolting—or Joading. Finally, the N.B.S. is sterile, on all real public issues, because “con- “ troversy ” is banned; which means that fair, full, rational discussion is banned. A few days ago we reprinted Lord Beveridge’s articles in “ The Times ” on policy in the British zone of Germany. He broadcast, to precisely the same effect, from the 8.8. C. This broadcast was

“ controversial ”; it brought the British Government’s policy into question. When such broadcasts are considered to be dangerous or unnecessary in England, English democracy and English political life will be sick indeed. But they are considered dangerous or unnecessary in New Zealand. Why is not the Licensing Report discussed? Why was not the Local Government Committee’s report? Why is no difficult issue that the public ought to understand, since the public will eventually have to decide it, plainly and candidly discussed on the air?

Last, take music. The N.B.S. has abundant funds. The report names eight oversea musicians (some of them New Zealanders) who had contracts during the year. All were soloists, but two of them specialised in two-piano works. Five were pianists; three, singers. The limits are too narrow’ —in point of numbers of artists and of the variety of their art. Years ago the N.B.S. brought the superb Budapest String Quartet to New Zealand: later, the admirable Comedy Harmonists. Since then, it has not gone out of its way to break, with a chamber music group or group of singers, the sequence of pianists and singers, singers and pianists; or it has not gone far enough out of its way to succeed. It is a w’ay so dull diat even the N.B.S. string quartet has not been used to anything tike full advantage. It is the way deep into the doldrums.