RADIO

Taranaki Daily News, 8 August 1930, Page 12

RADIO

CATERING FOR LISTENERS.

■ ALL .'STATIONS. HEARD WELL. • . (By* 8.C.L.) Listeners have been well catered for during the past .week and all stations have been coming in well. 2YA'e .“Eight O’clock Reviews” are proving most popular and amusing. 2YB on Saturday last gave a relay of a portion of,the second act of “Love Lies” from the Opera House. New Plymouth. While the broadcast was a most excellent one it was marred by a noisy line which rather spoilt the effect. 2YA and IYA also experienced trouble last Saturday, there being several prolonged interruption to the transmissions due to various causes. .The band concert relays from the New Plymouth Opera House by 2YB are dopig a _great deal towards popularising these very meritorious entertainments, and as the broadcasts are heard at considerable distances from Taranaki it helps to put the band on its mettle. To-morrow night 2YB will continue the newly-instituted gramophone recitals provided by dealers. To-morrow’s concert is to be provided by H. Collier and Co., the first hour to be of special classical items, and the final hour is to be of the latest releases of “dance hits.” On Wednesday next 2YB is to have the services of Mitchell’s Melodious Orchestra from Hawera. It is good to see musicians from the southern end of the province willing to assist in providing

the programmes for Taranaki’s broadcaster. What one would like to see would be a party from Stratford. Surely there are a sufficient number of good artists there to provide a splendid night’s entertainment. It is rumoured that the projected raid on unlicensed listeners in the New Plymouth district has already been commenced and that the public purse will benefit thereby shortly in the form of fines. Why io not the authorities also confiscate the sets of these pirates and distribute those sets available to the blind and to bedridden people in poor circumstances? This would have a far better effect than fines and do a deal of good at the same time. AERIALS AND TOWN-PLANNING The Auckland City Council has referred to the Town Planning Committee for a report on application from Lewis Eady, Limited, for permission to erect two wireless aerial masts on the flat room of the Lewis Eady Building, Queen Street. The mast on the Queen Street front is to be constructed of Oregon timber, in the form of a pyramid braced tower on an eig|it-feet square base and

the High. Street one will be Oi inetal pipe stayed with wire iope. The city engineer reported that in his opinion timber was not altogether suitable material, and . further, the structure proposed, while of sufficient strength, would be somewhat conspicuous and hardly a thing of. beauty. If, therefore, permission was granted by the council, it should be for a limited number of years only, and subject to the condition that .no advertising matter oi electrical illumination whatsoever was placed on the towers, and that- full responsibility must be taken by the firm for the stability and maintenance of the towers. The opinion of the Auckland City engineer regarding the suitability of timber for aerial masts is somewhat curious when one reflects that the authorities in Germany have for some time had this matter under consideration, and, after much study being given to the suitability of various materials for aerial masts for transmitting stations, have recently decided that numerous iron and steel masts shall be replaced by wooden masts. How a neatly constructed tower can be unsightly is hard to imagine, but if the critic is unsympathetic towards radio it may certainly make a difference. Sonic queer requests are occasionally received by the directors of the New Zealand broadcast stations, but none could eclipse a recent request sent to the United States broadcasting authorities by a resident of New Jersey, who described himself as a “mortician.” All he wanted was the fixing of one hour daily for the broadcasting music!

Little doubt can exist as to how such a musical hour would be acceptable to hospital patients.

A station which should be heard by short-wave listeners throughout New Zealand within a few months is the new 60 kilowatt transmitter now being erected by the Swiss Government. The station is expected to be heard loudly in every country in the world, as every endeavour is being made to render it unusually efficient. STORIES FROM ROSS SEA. An account of whaling experiences in the Ross Sea will be broadcast from 3YA on Monday, August 11, at 7.30. Mr. Aagaard, who is now resident in Christchurch, made several.trips to the Antarctic with the Norwegian expeditions. His talk should be exceptionally interesting. The foregoing list of Australasian broadcast stations will, it is hoped, be of particular value to listeners as the stations are in the order in which they come in on the dial of the receiver, starting at the higher wave-lengths and working down to the lowest.

“RADIO METROPOLIS.” TO COST £30,W0,0'00; The proposed “radio metropolis” in the heart of New York has become a definite object, and the demolition will begin this autumn of three square blocks of brownstone houses, shops and apartments, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and Forty-eighth and Fiftyfirst Streets, to provide a site for it, states the New York correspondent of a London paper. The new centre is to be completed by 1933. This joint project of the Radio Corporation of America and its subsidiary companies and Mr. John D. Rockefeller, jun., involves an outlay for land and buildings of £OO,000,900. The plan provides for the erection on the Fifth Avenue side of the property of a low oval building, in which will be housed, on the ground floor shops, on the first floor a bank, and on the roof a restaurant, which is to be surrounded by an outdoor promenade. At the back of the building will be a plaza 500 ft wide, which will contain fountains, garden plots and sculptures. At the far side of the plaza will be a 60-storey building, backing on ..Sixth Avenue, from which a corridor three storeys in height will run to the buildings on the northern and southern borders of the property. In this dominating skyscraper there will be 27 broadcasting studios, some of them from two to three storeys high — concert halls in effect. Each of the four theatres to be built in the “metropolis’’ will be equipped with broadcasting apparatus, and ultimately there will be a symphony hall as well. , The Radio Corporation and its subsidiary compzanies will lease all four theatres, and over 1,000,000 square feet of office and studio room. It will use the etudios and Hie theatres to provide entertainment, not only for the audiences in them, but also for what it expects to be the ever-increasing millions of wireless listeners, and at the same time it will make them experimental stations for the technique of stage production, broadcasting and television. MODERN RECEIVERS, American technical journals to hand contain information respecting the new models of receiving eetfl which are to be released this month for the winter season sales in the United States and Canada. It seems that many of the smaller makers of receiving sets have been eliminated by absorption or competition. Against this is the information that the leading manufacturers are in a, bettejr position financially than ever

before, and that the prospects for the coming season are particularly bright. It is emphasised that the majority of the larger manufacturers have very little carry-over from last season and that nevi sets will have to be built to supply the current demand. One peculiar feature of the new model receivers ifl the number and variety of makes that are designed for battery reception. The all-eleotric set is still, the most popular for home reception, but a new market seems to be developing for battery-operated sets for use in motorcars and motor-boats. Of course, in the United States, as in New Zealand, there are many thousands of homes, where there is a prospective demand for radio receivers., which have no connection with an alternating current electricity supply system. In all such instances the demand is for the battery-operated set. One outstanding feature of the new designs of all-electric sets is the smallness of the cabinets in which many of the best and most selective receivers are housed. The days of the large roomy console receivers seem to be passing and new sets are designed with a view to the occupancy of as little space as poflflible in the home. The new American sets do not, however, show any radical change in circuits. or the essential components of battery or all-elec-tric receivers.