BROADCASTING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23107, 5 February 1937, Page 14

BROADCASTING

TO I'HE EDITOR

Sir,—l notice a letter in this morning’s Daily Times signed “Service For All,” in which I am accused of being inaccurate when I say that practically no local artists have been heard over the air from 4YA lately. I have looked over the lists in programmes of recent date, and my statement is well confirmed. There are fine artists in Dunedin who are never asked to give items from this station. Your correspondent says my statement that “there is not much use for dignity in entertainment ” is ridiculous. My dictionary says that to entertain means “to amuse.” There is not much to amuse in the YA programmes, unless it be the dignified way the station goes about things. There seems to be no effort to get out of the ruck, no originality, no seizing of opportunities which present themselves in the form of visitors to Dunedin who should have personal stories worth telling, no seeking for local humorists, no difference in presentation,, the same dreary succession of well-thrashed records. Professor Shelley has been in charge for nearly two months, It would not take two minutes to dictate a circular letter to station programme organisers telling them to go out after the essential thing—entertainment. Instead he intends to build, up a conservatorium by impounding the money which listeners subscribe for their own entertainment. While these thousands of pounds are being expended the entertainment for which the money was subscribed is allowed to “go hang.” I repeat. Sir, there is ample need for a weeding out of the go-slow policy. The time is now—not ten years hence, when the conservatorium will be producing artists. There is a feeling abroad that the old policy of the board is being perpetuated. The old mistakes are being made, and I defy anyone to say that there is any improvement on the old system.— l am, etc., . J. L. M'Neish. Dunedin, February 4.