AUSTRALIAN RADIO

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19885, 11 March 1939, Page 14

AUSTRALIAN RADIO

PUBLIC HAS ITS SAY

PASSERS-BY NOT SHY

SYDNEY, Feb. 22

. An Australian Broadcasting Commission feature, "Sydney Speaks," has just celebrated its first birthday. Being a session which brings announcer and public into direct touch, it has been full of incident.

The plan of the session is simple. At 1.35 p.m. daily Mr. Douglas Channell takes up his stand with a microphone in Piccadilly arcade, and asks passers-by to air their views in various subjects. It might be thought that people so selected would be microphone-shy, but Mr. Channel! does not find them so.

"There is no difficulty in getting them to speak." he said yesterday. "If I did not know it to be impossible, I might think that some of them have a fore-knowledge of what I shall ask them. They reel off answers as though after long preparation. Women are especially fluent, I find."

But it is not always plain sailing. Onlookers sometimes disagree vehemently with opinions expressed by those answering questions. For instance, the woman who said she did not think children should be encouraged to believe in Father Christmas, was not at all popular. “When I left that day to return to the studio the argument was still going strong,” said Mr. Chhnnell. Police on the Air Perhaps the most effective “Sydney Speaks” item obtained during the year was that put over the day Mr. Channell was moved by the police from the G.P.O. stand from which he used to broadcast. In the middle of proceedings a sergeant of police commanded tiie people to “Move along there, please.” So effective was his work that finally he and Mr. Channell—and the microphone—were left in glorious isolation. Mr. Channell engaged the sergeant in a discussion as to the rights and wrongs of interfering with the broadcast, and an animated dialogue went over the air without the sergeant realising that he was talking for the benefit of a widespread audience. Suddenly he became aware that the microphone was hard at work—and the next thing listeners heard was, “Hey! 1 didn’t know that thing was working,” followed by heavy fopt.toDs retreating hurriedly.