BROADCASTING APPOINTMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27058, 18 April 1949, Page 4

BROADCASTING APPOINTMENT

It would be no disparagement of the new Director of Broadcasting to say that the news of his appointment has been received with some surprise by a large section of the listening public which he is to serve. It must be assumed that Mr Yates, who is to succeed Professor Shelley as Director of the Broadcasting Service, has excellent qualifications for the position. Of viiese, the radio licence holders in New Zealand—in effect, the whole adult population—have no knowledge. Yet in wishing him success ; n his new and onerous duties they would be pardoned for expressing concern at this extension of the principle—the leader.sbin rtf *he National Orchestra offers another example—of appointing the man on the spot to a post which, had it been advertised, might conceivably have attracted the attention of eminent persons in broadcastihg in other countries. This policy of placing Government nominees in important executive positions is not, generally, the one designed to give the people the best value for their money, and the listeners in New Zealand—-the 423,000 licence holders who each contributes twenty-five shillings a year to the departmental funds—are entitled to the best.

It would be futile to suggest that the present standard of broadcasting in New Zealand represents the highest that can be attained in either entertainment or educational values. The responsibility for this unsatisfactory state of affairs does not devolve on one mafi alone, but must be shared by those directing the policy under which broadcasting is carried out. The field of radio entertainment was very much an experimental one when Professor Shelley forsook an academic chair to take up the duties of Director of Broadcasting thirteen years ago. He presided over a rapidly growing department through a difficult period of development, and it would be invidious to pass criticism on any aspect of his administration without first commenting -on the manner in which radio broadcasting became primarily an instrument of Government policy. The manner in which his successor has been appointed does not offer the hope that the service will succeed in gaining any greater degree of independence, or that the existing dissatisfaction within and without the service will be remedied in the future. No other applications for the position were sought, no conditions of appointment were advertised; and there appears to have been no contract that would protect the new appointee from political direction exceeding that which would require him to conform to broad principles of policy. Such a system of appointment could prove as unfair to the person selected for the post as to those who were denied the opportunity of applying for it, and it offers little assurance to the people that their interests are being given primary consideration.