Threat to shortwave radio criticised

Press, 12 March 1982, Page 3

Threat to shortwave radio criticised

PA Wellington New Zealand’s small shortwave broadcasting service is under the threat of the costcutting axe, just when there is an unprecedented boom in shortwave broadcasting in the Pacific, according to the broadcasting authorities. The Minister of Foreign Affairs (Mr Cooper), on Wednesday suggested cutting the service. This is the second time the service has faced such a threat; in 1976 it was actually put off the air for three weeks before public protest led to its reinstatement. The head of external services for broadcasting, Mr Fred Barnes, said yesterday that the shortwave boom was “quite frightening.” New Zealand transmits on two 7V2-kilowatt American Work! War II transmitters to its target area of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Australia. By contrast the Soviet Union uses 45 500-kilowatt transmitters to reach Asia and the Pacific. Each day 440 shortwave channels are broadcast into the Pacific. “There are so many nations broadcasting shortwave,” Mr Barns said. “People have recognised that the Pacific Basin will be the major sphere of interest in the future.” Diplomatically, New Zea- . land may have decided to opt out of shortwave at the wrong moment. Next year a conference organised by the International Telecommunications Union will allocate shortwave channels in the Pacific for the rest of the century. If New Zealand is not broadcasting it will lose any claims to channels and will not be able to get back into shortwave broadcasting until the turn of the century. New Zealand’s shortwave, station is attracting many listeners in Japan where a “Radio New Zealand Listeners’ Club” has been formed. Regular Japaneselanguage broadcasts from Wellington have promoted New Zealand tourist destinations, including Mr Cooper’s home town of Queenstown, and New Zealand customs. Mr Cooper said the service cost the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about $200,000 a year and that to replace ageing transmitters would mean an-

other $6 million. He said he favoured ending the broadcasts. Mr Cooper also criticised some of the programmes beamed to the South Pacific which he said did not show New Zealand in the best possible light: In addition to the shortwave programmes, external services produce 5000 hours a year of cassette programmes for medium-wave Pacific radio stations. This includes music, sports, New Zealand news, news about Pacific Islands, and programmes in Niuean, Samoan, Tongan, and Cook Islands Maori. “For some of the small stations in the Pacific this represents a substantial input into their programming, as much as a day every week,” Mr Barnes said. “We do not broadcast the silly sort of things that Mr Cooper is talking about. It is all done by responsible journalists." The patron of the National Radio League, Mr J. F. Fox, of Mosgiel, said last evening that New Zealand had the lowest power international station in the world and successive governments had done nothing to improve the station since it went on the air in 1948. “New Zealand has a responsibility to the South Pacific and the massacre of Radio New Zealand’s voice will cause more harm than the Minister expects,” Mr Fox said. A few years ago, he said, the Government axed the shortwave service but after protests by listeners throughout the world it reinstated the stations, but as relays to the national programme. The NZPA special correspondent in Rarotonga, Percy Henderson, reported that Cook Islanders reacted with disbelief yesterday to the news that Radio New Zealand broadcasts to the South Pacific may be ended — news they learned from such broadcasts yesterday morning. Radio New Zealand had been the main source of visible links with New Zealand for so long that its broadcasts had become a fact of everyday life, Cook Islanders said. All Radio New Zealand news and sports casts are carried by Cook Islands A.M. and F.M. stations and are also printed in the Govern-ment-published “Cook Islands News.” The islands are New Zea-land-oriented with so many Cook Islanders in New Zealand, and direct news links are seen as vitally important.