VALUE OF RADIO

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20509, 29 August 1936, Page 8

VALUE OF RADIO

INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL VIEWS OF DIRECTOR By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, August 28. “I think the world is only beginning to realise the social value of radio. Radio is only beginning to struggle out of the period of childhood. It has in all countries been too much in the nature of a variety entertainment,” declared Professor Shelley in the first interview he has given since his appointment as Director of Broadcasting. Professor Shelley said he looked on radio as an instrument in very much the same way as he looked on books and printing as instruments. In the hands of community those powerful instruments could be used for good or evil, or they could be used as mere toys.

“The time has come,” said Professor Shelley, “when radio can be used as a stimulus to raise the standard of thought and of artistic appreciation in the whole community. Whether the people as a whole, are .equal to the demands of the age in the way of sympathetic understanding of modern problems remains to be seen, but at least they can no longer deny that they have not access to such understanding.” Many subjects had remained the preserve of a few specialists because the ideas had been couched in technical and difficult language in books, said Professor Shelley. Their interest never had been sufficiently stimulated to stir them to overcome these difficulties, but even the most difficult subject of human inquiry could be introduced to the man on the street in a living way by the use of the conversational method of radio. People found both Interesting and intellectually exciting the expression of ideas over the air which they would never dream of searching for in books. “The possibilities of radio are so stupendous that anyone who has the job of directing its use must feel humble and inadequate,” added Professor Shelley. “Before I come to any conclusion on what I would like to do in detail I shall survey the whole field and put forward to the Minister a comprehensive scheme, which may take years to work out, but changes, of course, would be made consistently as opportunity arose, in the direction of building up a complete structure. Radio is like a new power liberated. It is quite easy for it to be dissipated. It is quite easy for it to be regarded as a matter of odds and ends and something new, perhaps good, introduced from time to time although ultimately it may have nothing to do with the complete structure, nothing to do with radio as an institution.”