Heart in mouth unease

Press, 26 June 1978, Page 1

Heart in mouth unease

Last evening’s “Country Calendar” television programme about foot-and-mouth disease was too realistic for some Christchurch viewers. The programme described the effects of a big outbreak of the stock disease which was purportedly raging through the lower half Of the North Island. Perplexed or worried viewers deluged the TVI studios in Christchurch with telephone calls. An hour after the programme finished at 8.10 p.m., a spokesman said the lines had been “swamped” until then, and calls were still being received. “We would have received more calls about this one programme than for any other we have shown for some time,” she said. “Some of them wanted to know whether it had been real, but most were just not sure.” Not all of the calls had been of this kind, however, and many had been complimentary. One woman who telephoned “The Press” after she failed to get through to TVI because the number was constantly engaged, said she had been extremely worried. She had initially telephoned for reassurance that the programme was merely simulating the effects. “I didn’t start to watch it until a minute or so after it had begun; I thought it was real; it looked like a news-flash or something,” she said.