ON THE BROADCAST BAND

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19314, 15 October 1932, Page 15

ON THE BROADCAST BAND

Church services to be relayed to- | morrow are:—lYA, Pitt Street Metho- I dist; 2YA, St. Andrews Presbyterian; 3YA, Anglican Cathedral; 4YA, Moray Place Congregational; 2ZW, St. Paul’s . Pro-Cathedral. Good announcers must be born, or made. One or two of the new men are neither. The male chorus of the Imperial Grand Opera Company will be on the programme from 2YA on Sunday night. Evidently KDKA was on an all-night broadcast on Tuesday night, as it was coming in behind 3YA until about 10.45 p.m. The arrival of daylight saving time will soon make a difference to reception of the Australian small fry, which have been holding their end up well for months. The new arrangements for broadcasting from racecourses appear to be working well, and should give more general satisfaction than was the case before the microphone was banned from the courses. Previously people who were not interested in racing or trotting complained that too much time was taken up with talk from the course, but now little more than five minutes per race is devoted to the racing descriptions. Not so very long ago, a Dunedin man who had been abroad asserted that he had never heard a better vocal quartette than one which used to sing from a New Zealand station. That gentleman could not have heard the Sundowners, now regular performers at 3LO, or the Revellers, from 2GB. These combinations give fine performances, but they have the common fault of singing their own “arrangements” ot songs which are much better as the composer wrote them.

Too many “talks” and lecturettes are getting on the air. It is all very well to talk of the educative influence of radio, but people who desire to be educated can go to reference libraries themselves if they are intrigued with any special subject. “Talks,” anyway, is a nuisance. All these speakers do is to read an essay they have dredged out of text books, and the Board should arrange that not more than two stations are “talking” at once.

2UE Sydney, as good as any of the Australian B’s, is now transmitting from its new location on greatly increased power. On 1025 k.c., it is on one of the few clear spots on the band and is well worth listening to.

Not so long ago it was asserted that the Australian B Stations where, apart from their dreadful advertising stunts putting over better programmes than the National stations under A.B.C. control. Since the Commission took charge, A station programmes have improved out of recognition, and the B's have been left far behind. They are not content to stay there, however, and recently they held a conference with the idea of taking joint action to challenge the big fellows. Competition for public favour promises to be keen* which is all to the good for listeners.

A correspondent of an Australian radio journal asserts that “some of the Australian sets being manufactured are a disgrace to the name, and very soon listeners will become thoroughly disgusted and get a false opinion of the superhet., the best circuit in the world for dealing with the selectivity problem.” He alleges that the vast

majority of these sets have nothing better than 15 or 20 k.c. selectivity, and that some of these so-called superhets. are not so selective as a good t.r.f. machine with a band-pass filter. All Australian made sets are not bad, of course, but most of them are dear. One machine with a "name” behind it is now on sale in New Zealand—for IS or £7 less than its Sydney price!

Many home constructors think that because a set has screen-grid valves it will not "howl.” This is not so, and one set was tested to see if it was correct, and it was found that a most awful “howl” could be got from the set.