Radio IN THE HOME

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18599, 21 June 1930, Page 15 (Supplement)

Radio IN THE HOME

THE CRICKET RELAYS. Cricket enthusiasts in considerable numbers remained up late to hear the test match news from 2FC (and 2BL on Sunday morning). 2FC’s special transmission at 12.45 a.m. (New Zealand time) was particularly interesting. The smaller station 2UW remained on the air later than its bigger competitor to give later details, but lower power and some fuzziness made its news difficult to pick up. Nothing definite has been said on the point, but the impression has been conveyed that 2FC rebroadcasted an account of wireless telephone message direct from Nottingham. The reproduction was so good that one suspects that there was some camouflage about this, and that the description was first received in Sydney, and then put on the air again. If it was a genuine rebroadcast of a Northern Hemisphere station, a new standard has been set in this class of wireless work. Listeners who made a night of it, or set the alarm for 5 a.m. on Sunday, were rewarded by excellent reception of “Plum” Warner's story of the second day's play in the test, and got a different angle from that supplied by the Australian special. A COMPARISON. “Here is another interesting comparison between Australian and New Zealand broadcasting,” says the “Radio Record.” “In Australia there are 308,764 listeners, and in New Zealand there are only 38,987. Thus there are eight times more listeners in. Australia than in New Zealand. The Australian Broadcasting Co., in their official statement, state that*their total programme time from their seven stations averages 39.000 hours annually. The New Zealand company’s official figures for the year show that their programmes have totalled 8793 hours. Therefore, although Australia has eight times as many listeners as there are in New Zealand, the Commonwealth has only 3 1-3 longer programmes than the Dominion. Accordingly the New Zealand company are giving more than double the service provided by the Australian company in proportion to the number of listeners.” The “independent” organ of the Broadcasting Company could just as easily have said that the average transmission hours per station by the Australian Company was 5570 per annum, and from the New Zealand stations 2190. 2VW, relayed by 2DB Melbourne and other smaller stations, gave a ball-for-ball story of the test, but this was not well received in Timaru. There was an “uncle” with a Welsh name but a braid Scots accent who reigned for a long time at one of the YA stations. His depressing voice became very tiresome to the majority of his young listeners, and they breathed a sigh of relief when he took lumbago and went off the air. There is another dialect “uncle” broadcasting from another station who should be spelled occasionally. 2YA mars its dinner session by lack of balance. It insists rigorously on the “tacet” between groups of items, but allows no pause between numbers comprising each group. Apparently two gramophones are used, and one is 6et spinning before the last notes from the preceding record have died away. It may indicate dexterity on the part of the operator, but the music—generally well selected—would give greater pleasure if a few seconds were allowed between the items and the “tacet” periods were shortened. Enormously high powers are now being used in the United States, and the limit set by the Federal Radio Commission has been stretched a little. WGY Schenectady, has been given permission to use 200 kilowatts for special testing purposes, and readers will have some idea of the power used 1 behind this transmitter when it is j stated that 4YA uses half a kilowatt, j WGY is crystal controlled, which has | the effect of steadying the wave on 379 metres, and the high-tension power supply totals 20,000 volts. This supply becomes so heated during operation that water is circulated for cooling purposes. It is claimed that this super-transmitter preserves tonal qualities more faithfully than a smaller transmitter.

LONDON PROGRAMMES. The outstanding success of the British wireless telephone service to Sydney has led many people to look for its early application to the relaying of the London broadcasting programmes, (says an Australian radio journal.). If. they reason, we are able to hear the voices of our friends in England as clearly as we hear our friends on the telephone line from Melbourne, why should we not be able to have music from London as we now have music from Melbourne? However, there is much more to to it than that. A-art from the matter of cost, there are many technical difficulties in the way of success. Even when these are overcome by further research and experiment, there is another factor which it does not seem possible we shall surr count. That is the suitability of times of transmission. The London programmes go on the air at a moment when Australia is asleep, and, thcref re, would not be widely listened to if rebroadcast. This has always been the difficulty fstcing the alternative method of listening to London programmes by the direct reception of 2LO through a short-wave station. Although the technical difficulties of re-transmis-sion are avoided in this way, the programmes can only be heard at unsuitable times. And, furthermore, unless Australian listeners wish to bear the .'.ost of erecting and maintaining a short-wave station in London for this purpose, there is not likely to be direct relays of this nature. British listeners are unwilling to support a station for the sole benefit of distant dominions. It seems there is only one other way in which Australian listeners may add the British programmes to their choice of entertainment, and that is by arranging for their complete recording, transhipping the records to Australia, -nd replaying them here a few weeks later. This method has much to commend it. It is not a new and untried idea, having met with success in America and Europe; it is by far the cheaper; and it would provide, as a whole, British programme presentations of musical and dramatic features, prepared especially for broadcasting, by the most capable entrepreneurs and artists in the world. This, when we stop to consider how much of our present programmes are composed of ordinary gramophone records (which most of us have heard or can hear at our leisure on our own machines) would be a distinct advantage. Shortly a giant broadcasting station is to be erected at Nanking. The installation will be done by the Telefunken Co. of Berlin. The transmitter will generate an output of about 60 kilowatts, similar to the one already installed at Oslo, Norway. This station is to have twelve times the power of 2YA. 2YA continues to be held up by Australians as a model for Commonwealth stations to emulate, but complaints of distortion and fading are persistent from listeners nearer Wellington. The fading trouble, which was not in evidence for a time, has become pronounced, and is particularly noticeable at night. The first test match, to be played at Dunedin to-day, will be put on the air from Dunedin and Wellington. There is plenty of volume from 4YA as heard in Timaru, but many licensees in South Otago and Southland, declare their inability to pick up the transmissions from Dunedin. Some of them state that daylight reception is quite fair, but that directly the evening frost sets in the wave fades. A writer in the Australian “Wireless Weekly” says:—"The ‘Belle of New York’ broadcast through 2FC on May 9, was a very bad broadcast, but it was justified because so many people remembered the piece, and knew the action by heart, and the songs and the dialogue. Because, otherwise, it would have been impossible to make head or tail of it. You heard a man who was obviously a comedian, speaking, and when he stopped you heard the audience laugh, so you gathered that he must have said or done something funny, and you laughed in sympathy. And so on. I believe that such musical comedies were performed better in the studio many years ago.” Yet that broadcast came to New Zealand in excellent style.

There is much concern in New South Wales over the insistence of the authorities that the Newcastle “B” class station 2HD must come down to 212 .metres. This, it is contended by manufacturers and others interested will bring the station below the realm of proper reception on the average set. As all of the Australian “B” station licenses will expire within a year, it is feared the Postal Department will insist upon a general climb down in wave length for them, to the band below 250 metres. It is contended that it would be unfair to limit the large number of “B’s” to this small channel, and allot the best portion of the broadcast band to the numerically smaller “A” stations. The owners of the non-Gov-ernment plants urge that 2HD has been treated most arbitrarily in having its transmission wave reduced without any consultation or consideration of other than official interests.

Another concert will be given tonight from 2FC by the Professional Musicians’ Union. The invasion of the talkies has left many fine instrumentalists without employment, and their concerts are worth tuning in.

DETERIORATING. New Zealanders enjoy Australian programmes free, gratis, and for nothing. as the showmen say. and have no right to be critical. Still, it is permissible to remark that the improvement in radio fare which was noticeable when the ABC first took over the programmes has not been maintained, and latterly the standard has fallen below that set by the earlier companies. There is too much relaying of interstate stations, too many sketches and plays, and altogether too many “talks.” A week with the dials set to a Sydney station would give the impression that Australians just love to hear other people talking. The explanation probably is that there are so many unemployed actors that sketches and plays can be put on cheaply. Australian listeners appear to be just waking up to something that has been obvious for a long time to New Zealanders who sit up to tune in dance sessions—that one clever dance band had become deadly monotonous, on account of the similarity of treatment accorded to every number played. Dance bands are like uncles and aunts at children’s sessions—they need changing round as often as possible. After the conclusion of the Test today, listeners who wish to try out their receivers should tune in 2BL, which from 4.45 (New Zealand time) will broadcast from Sydney Sports Ground a description of the League match, Western Suburbs v. South Sydney. The second half of this game will commence at 5.40 (New Zealand time), and if conditions are favourable, should be audible. It will give an oportunity of comparing Australian radio reporters with the New Zealand brand. PROGRESS OF TELEVISION. The English Baird Television Company recently put a television receiver on the market, to be sold in London for 25 guineas. Parts are also obtainable for home construction at 16 guineas the set. On March 31 they gave a demonstration of simultaneous transmission of sound and images; the speech and music were transmitted through the London Regional transmitter on 365 metres, while the television images were sent by the national transmitter on 261 metres. The organiser of this series of dual tests, Mr Sydney Moseley; the inventor of the thermionic valve, Sir Thomas Fleming; and the chairman of the Baird International Company were seen and heard while they gave their speeches, and songs by well-known artists followed. The whole transmission was very successful, and at a receiving station in the centre of London the whole programme was followed with great interest. By means of a Baird televisor and a little adjustment of the two knobs which respectively control the synchronisation and the “framing” of the picture, the rapidly swirling pattern was resolved into a steady head and shoulders image of the speaker. Two wireless sets were used, one for receiving the television signals and the other for the reception of the sound signals. A particularly noteworthy feature of the dual transmission was that there was no lag between vision and sound such as often destroys the illusion of the “talkies.” Such exact synchronism is, of course, brought about automatically, by the practically instantaneous transmission of both television and sound signals. These reports seems to indicate that English television has progressed more towards the perfection of a remarkable instrument than that of any other country. American headlines show a certain resentment: “Baird, the Scottish Inventor, Gives a Television Show —Americans Call It a Good Stunt, but Nothing New—They Point to Previous Demonstrations Here.” But the Baird Company claims the following records: That they were first to transmit an image across the Atlantic to a liner in mid-ocean; first to demonstrate television in colour, and also in stereoscopic relief; first to demonstrate television without artificial light; and then without visible light; and first to demonstrate “noctovision”—scanning by an invisible spot of light. The American claim is, that synchronised transmissions of image and speech have been carried on for some time in America as experiments, but that television is not yet commercially practicable. If the experiments from the British national stations become part of the routine of British broadcasting, and if the British public begins to buy the comparatively cheap television receivers, the American’s urgument about commercial practicability will be valueless. To-day an account of the first Rugby Test against the British team will be relayed from 4YA and 2YA. The second Test at Christchurch on July 5 will be handled by 3YA and 2YA, the third, at Auckland on July 26, by IYA and 2YA, and the fourth at Wellington, by 2YA only. The Broadcasting Company is not gaining popularity by its handling of football games this season.