Time and time again

Press, 27 May 1981, Page 21

Time and time again

Radio

Heath Lees

Last week in this column I mentioned that there seemed to be an all-pervading Trinity in the news bulletins just now: the tour, the national airline and the National Prime Minister. Well that’s wrong. These three obsessions don’t appear just in news bulletins, they’re in all the current affairs programmes too.

Take “Focus on Politics” (YA) at 12.08 last Sunday — not 12.00 or even 12.10 you’ll notice, but 12.08. One must be precise. “Focus” scored a hat-trick in introducing the Prime Minister, due to attend the opening of Parliament this week when the financial affairs of Air New Zealand would be examined. The Prime Minister was duly questioned about the tour, thus producing the time-tele-scope, the three-in-one. And speaking of time-tele-scopes, “Insight 81” (YA) at the slightly less strange time of 10.05 gave us a 8.8. C. documentary on time itself. There was no acknowledgement of the fact that most of this material had already been heard.

It sounded funny when I heard that bit about the woman who knew she had

“been there before” because I knew I had “heard that before,” and on checking my own records discovered this had been broadcast on Wednesday evening, July 16, 1980 under the title of “Arrows of Time.”

Time cycles I can understand, but re-cycled time without acknowledgement seems a bit cheap. The second half of this programme is repeated next Sunday, and desite the sense of deja entendu it is worth hearing. “Sunday Supplement” still takes place at 9.10 a.m. — a good solid time that, though the contributors themselves seem to be having increasing trouble in finding something substantial to say. The opening contributor maintained that some of' the wealthiest companies were playing ducks and drakes with the tax system and qualifying for tax rebates on the basis of export incentives. I wouldn’t have minded some facts and figures on that; the claims seemed pretty strong to be merely tossed out in passing. And he seemed too embarrassed to explain “fiscal drag”; which as we all know means dresses for lawyers.

The reason why “People, Places and Personalities” starts at 9.33 a.m. on a Sunday is probably because the weather forecaster takes three minutes to cover the country. A few weeks ago on this very slot, his piece of resistance, or, perhaps more appropriately, his climatic moment, came when he announced that a slow-moving anti-cyclone was moving slowly across the country. Sometimes they do get it absolutely right. For me Sunday listening concluded with 3ZB’s “Reflections.” The theme this time was suicide, and the programme, like Cal Coolidge’s preacher, was against it, though the song written for the occasion — “Don’t do it, nobody gives a damn” — seemed designed for no other purpose than to drive one to it.