N.Z. MAY HAVE COLOUR TV MARKET IN AUST

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32462, 24 November 1970, Page 1

N.Z. MAY HAVE COLOUR TV MARKET IN AUST

Part of the cost of colour television in New Zealand could be underwritten by sales to Australia, the export manager of EJM.L Electronics, Ltd (Mr P.W.Granet), said in Christchurch last evening.

Mr Granet, whose firm is the maker of more than half the colour television cameras in use in England, said that he thought New Zealand would introduce colour ahead of Australia. In this event, it might be worth while for colour tubes and components to be manufactured in New Zealand, partly to save overseas currency and partly to earn it from the Australians, he said.

Mr Granet said that unfortunately his company did not make these parts; but he knew people who would, he thought, be interested. Making the tubes and components in New Zealand would not necessarily reduce the cost of colour television receivers, which would probably be about $6OO, but it would considerably reduce the drain on New Zealand’s resources.

Mr Granet said that Australia might introduce colour in 1973, but there was nothing definite. No-one would establish a factory until there was something definite, and he thought it likely that New Zealand would come to a decision before then. About 90 per cent of all English television broadcasts were now in colour, Mr Granet said. He had no doubt

that within 15 years—at the very outside—the whole world would be transmitting in colour. "Monochrome,” he said, “is completely a dead duck.” Mr Granet said a commission was sitting in South Africa at present to decide if television should be introduced there and what form it should take. There was a conservative element in South Africa which was opposed to tele-

vision, on the ground that almost all the programmes i would be in English and this : would push Afrikaans into i the background, he said. i He hoped that when tele-i vision was introduced, South : Africa would go straight into colour. There seemed little point, he said, in training technicians and producers in the use of monochrome and then, a few years later, having to retrain them to use colour.

“I believe, of course, that the same thing applies to New Zealand’s second channel. Why train new people in monochrome, and then have to start all over again in colour?" he said. “And I suppose this means the existing channel would also have to change to colour.” Mr Granet admits cheer-

fully to his vested interest in the introduction of colour to New Zealand's television. His firm has already sold one colour camera to the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, and it hopes to sell about 20 more, at some $40,000 each. Mr Granet has recently sold his cameras in Beirut, and behind the Iron Curtain. His visit to Christchurch is as a member of a trade mission from the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers’ Association, Ltd. Last year, Britain’s total export of electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances was valued at $995 million, of which $23 million was bought by New Zealand.