AUSTRALIAN LISTENERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 174, 24 July 1929, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN LISTENERS

NEARLY 300,000 LICENSES License statistics for the Commonwealth up to the end of May, when there were 298,551 licensed listeners, indicate that there will be at least £lBO,OOO annually available for national broadcasting in Australia as from this month, when the company appointed recently by the Federal Government as the contractors for the supply of news and entertainment programmes takes over the stations 2FC, 3LO and 2BL. The Other stations will be transferred when their permit expires, or possibly before that under mutual arrangements. New South Wales, with its 98,550 licensed listeners, shows an increase of over 22,000 for the past 12 months, while Victoria, with 143,344, increased by only 6832. It would seem that saturation point has been reached in Victoria; or it may be that numerous listeners are discarding crystal sets and have not replaced them with valve receivers. That happened in New South Wales about two years ago, when listeners in Mosman and North Sydney gave up crystal sets in disgust because of the inter-station interference caused by 2GB. The same thing happened in '

the eastern suburbs where the proximity of 2BL made it impossible to receive 2FC and other stations. Since then there has been a steady increase in the popularity of selective valve receivers, which eliminate inter-station interference. The joint control of 2FC and 2BL enabled better and more varied programmes to be put on the air, with the result that the radio trade in Sydney has steadily improved and the number of licensed listeners increased. Queensland has now 24,681 licenses, an increase of 54 for the month; South Australia, 23,573; Western Australia, 3799, an increase of 32; and Tasmania, 4604. The new contractors will be allowed 12s per annum in respect of each licensed listener. The minimpm amount available on last month’s license figures would be £179,000, but the average increase in licenses last year was about 3000 monthly, so the contractors’ payments should increase at the ratio of £lBOO monthly during the currency of the contract, which is for a period of three years.