STEAM RADIO’S REVOLUTION

Press, 26 February 1977, Page 15

STEAM RADIO’S REVOLUTION

Voices in the Air. By Peter Downes and Peter Harcourt. Methuen/Radio New Zealand. 176 pp. $9.50. (Reviewed by David Gunby) The first radio broadcast in New Zealand was made on the night of November 17. 1921. by an Otago University College group led by the professor of physics. Dr Robert Jack. AH that is known of the programme’s content is that it included a popular song of the day, ‘ Hello My’ Dearie.” When Clive Drummond, then still an obscure Post Office employee, but destined before long to become a national radio celebrity, first picked up the transmissions in Wellington later that same month, the sound he heard was that of the evergreen ballad, ‘ Come Into the Garden, Maud.” Both songs were taken from gramophone records provided by a Dunedin store which continued to make records available for the broadcasts, which were made twice-weekly, two hours a night, until they ceased on Christmas Eve. It might be thought that the first music broadcast in the Dominion lacked the weight needed to answer to so portentous an occasion. So, perhaps, it did. But whatever criticism may be levelled at Professor Jack’s choice of music, none can be directed against the predictions which, in August 1921. he had made in the "‘Otago Daily Times” concerning the development of broadcasting in New Zealand: Wireless telephony will develop along its own special lines. It will give even wider publicity to all news of public interest, to speeches and entertainments and will thus tend to bring country settlers into close touch with all the life of the town. Further than that, the whole life of the community will be broadened and educated by being brought into more effective touch with the life of the whole world. No country in the world stands to benefit more than New Zealand by thus having the disadvantages of its isolation removed.

Time has borne abundant witness to the accuracy of Professor Jack's prophecies. Radio did break down the effects of isolation, and hence radically' affected New Zealand society. Professor Jack was inaugurating a kind of revolution in New Zealand, and he knew’ it. Professor Jack’s broadcasts were strictly experimental and noncommercial. Those who followed in his footsteps were of necessity noncommercial also, since the law prohibited advertising and the only source of income for groups other than those with, e.g., a radio or gramphone shop behind them, was the donation of supporters. That any' stations operated at all under these conditions was remarkable. That so manv did (seven by the end of 1922, 11 a’ year later) is a tribute to the dedication of the groups of enthusiasts who manned the stations and ran them on a shoestring under primitive

conditions. Such a situation was, of course, intolerable. The question was, what should be done about it? In a sense this has remained a perennial question, alongside another from which it cannot be divorced: namely, to what extent should private enterprise be allowed into an area which, since the remarkably far-sighted Act of 1903, remains legally a government preserve. The solution of the Coates Government was a curious amalgam of private and public interests in, a government-funded but privately run Radio Corporation of New Zealand. This was succeeded, in 1931 by a Government Broadcasting board with a three man board of management — least one of whom had never owned a radio until he was appointed. This, in its turn, gave way to the nationalised service set up by the first Labour Administration — a service which, incorporating both commercial and non-commercial stations. was to provide the basis for all that has been done since.

Finance and politics make up one great strand in the history of New Zealand broadcasting, and “Voices in the Air” gives it proper prominence,

though carefully (as befits a venture published jointly by Radio New Zealand and Methuen) treading a middle way and avoiding claims of bias. Equally, however, this history of more than half a century of New Zealand radio emphasises the personalities that gave life to the new medium, and the programmes it presented.

Clive Drummond. Aunt Daisy, Selwvn Toogood, Winston McCarthy, James Shelley, Uncle Scrim: these and many others enliven the pages, while programmes ranging from “Officer Crosby” and “The Lone Ranger” to “Dr Paul” are recalled in all their remarkable banality for the wonderment of a readership which is now dedicated to their visual equivalents on TV. Thanks to the provision of an accompanying EP recording, we can even hear some of the radio greats for ourselves in a small selection of historic broadcasts which includes Michael Joseph Savage announcing the outbreak of war in 1939, Scrim giving a morning talk on the ZBs and Professor Shelley speaking of his appointment as Director of Broadcasting. Radio is a mass medium, with all the virtues and ills attendant upon such, and any history must dwell on both the good and the bad, the significant and the trivial. “Voices in the Air” does this, and hence will provide a fair indication of how New Zealand broadcasting has been not only in .moments of greatness but during the long spells of ordinariness. Where political considerations enter the authors tend to adopt a studiously bland approach, most noticeable (as might be expected) in relating the changes in radio organisation under the last two governments. But then “Voices in the Air” is not a true history: its authors call it a documentary and the term is an apt one which not only describes the book generically, but links it to the series of jubilee radio programmes broadcast in 1975. It will give as much pleasure as they did.