BRITISH BROADCASTS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 6 March 1928, Page 9

BRITISH BROADCASTS

BRIGHTER ERA ANTICIPATED! REMOVAL OF CONTROVERSY BAN EVERYBODY DELIGHTED. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. Received 1.50 p.m. to-day. LONDON, March 5. The removal of the controversy ban on the British Broadcasting Corporation finds everybody delighted. It is regarded as the biggest change in the history of broadcasting in England. Keen discussion had latterly been aroused by the frequency with which it was announced that broadcasts had been cancelled at the eleventh hour, either through the British Broadcasting Corporation objecting to the views about to be expressed, or through _ the speakers refusing to be officially shackled. The strongest critics had been the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, Lord Birkenhead, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Mr. G. B. Shaw, and Mr. Lloyd George. Mr. Churchill declared that the ban was absolutely idiotic, because _ controversy was the soul of British life. Mr. Shaw, who has not lost a- single opportunity for a tilt at the. British Broadcasting Corporation since . it banned his speech on his seventieth birthday, says: “Mr. Baldwin, with a general election in the offing, pretends to discover what I found out every time I spoke. I was controversial, hoping that the Postmaster-General would send a brigade of Guards to stop me. ’ ’

The decision suggests an era of brighter wireless in England.