ADVANCE RADIO PROGRAMMES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22779, 15 January 1936, Page 4

ADVANCE RADIO PROGRAMMES

TO THE EDITOR SiE,— 'Justice ” wrote to your paper last Friday, taking up cudgels on behalf « the Broadcasting Board. I said nothing against the board, which has nothing to gain or lose whichever way the programmes are published, because, in any case, the listeners pay for them. I was criticising the method by which they come to us. Along with many others, i Consider it is not the correct method. " Your correspondent’s letter suggests that he must think that listeners expect the board to send out programmes free. That is not so. He mentions the staggering totals these things cost. No one complains about having to pay lid for a daily paper, ye<. the total amount paid by subscribers must reach a staggering total, but that is cot the point—it is the amount per subscriber which counts. Your correspondent estimates the cost of printing at 3d per copy. If so, how, iri pre-depression days with a much smaller circulation, could the same paper _be published at 3d complete with technical articles, occupying many pages and not a fraction of the present amount of advertising? , , I happen to have on hand a copy printed in 1929, in which the programmes Were in more complete detail, well spread oat for easy reference, and not crammed pp as they are at present. Of the present 104 hours’ programme, only three hours are in detail, the rest being selected Recordings, news session, dance session, C>tc. Fur met than that, the board at present does the hard work by getting the programmes typewritten, and sent along, so that all that has to be done is fc set them up on the linotype—quite a different matter from having to pay a Reporter to go and collect the programmes tod write them down. , , . “ Justice ” states also that the journal must be published on a business basis Whether by the board or by private entergie, but there is an essential difference ;bat any profits under the board s pacing would go into the public accounts, tod we are all shareholders in that. He also states that to expect the programmes at Ud per week is optimistic. As i Jrn the only correspondent who mentioned Sat price,. I thank him for branding tae as an optimist, which I certainly am, and intend to remaifi, for optimism is fine way of getting things done.—l am, too., Bach. Saddle Hill, January 13.