DUNEDIN B STATIONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 155, 2 June 1937, Page 11

DUNEDIN B STATIONS.

LIVELY MEETING HELD. PLEBISCITE WANTED. Per Press Asyociatiqn. DUNEDIN, June 1. A lively and frequently amusing meeting of radio listeners filled the concert chamber of the Town Hall this evening when representatives of the B stations and local organisations that have used or benefited by such stations presented the case for private enterprise in broadcasting and endeavoured to show'' cause why the Government should be urged to redeem its preelection promises and either buy out. or subsidise .the local broadcasting units.

The Mayor (Rev. E. A. Cox) who convened the meeting, was in the chair and rather took the wind out of everyone’s sails by opening the proceedings with a recital of the.. Government’s intentions received by him that afternoon from the acting-Prime Minister. He stated that the Government was prepared to allow Station 4ZB to remain on the air, to buy out those who wished to sell and to subsidise such stations as might be considered essential.

'The ease for the B stations was volubly put in the first instance by Mr Harold Booth, of the Radio Listeners League, who was followed by Rev. L. B. Neale (Methodist), Rev. A. C. Standage (representing the broadcasting committee of the Presbyterian Church;, Mr J. Roberts (Mayor of Cromwell)’ and Mr W. J. Bardsley, but the issue did not go unchallenged. Several more or less incoherent speakers and a host of interjectors were inclined to suggest that the meeting had been convened in the interests ot the proprietors of B stations and Hon. M. Connelly, M.L.C., and Dr McMillan, M P., took up the cudgels very determinedly on the part of the Government. , , „ The result was a hectic round or heckling and interjection with several sharp reprimands from the chair before the meeting carried, by no means unanimously, the following resolution: “That this meeting of citizens ot Dunedin views with the gravest concern the suggestion that local B stations may be forced to close down as a result ot the Government’s policy and calls on the Government to carry out its pledges to these stations in their entirety; and that, further, the Government be requested to take a plebiscite of listeners on the retention or otherwise of B stations, and that in the event ot the vote going for retention,, the Government be asked whether such stations are to be maintained by revenue from advertising or by means of an adequate sublt was stated by Mr Booth that apI plication had been made for permission Ito broadcast the meeting, but it was ’refused by the Minister.