Listen In!

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 244, 15 October 1931, Page 10

Listen In!

NOTES AND PROGRAMMES *3?

(By

“Detector.”

2YA Breaks Down. 2 YA, Wellington suffered a breakdown on Monday evening during the children’s session, and did not come on the air again until a quarter to ten. Temporary repairs only could have been effected as the transmissions from the station were very erratic on Tuesday. This is the most serious breakdown that 2YA has experienced. Newspaper Publicity.

When referring to the growth of radio and the expansion of sales for radio sets Mr William C. Grunow, vice-president of the Grisby Grunow Company, said: “In placing the Majestic radio on the market our organisation used every recognised form of advertising, and today we are convinced that we owe to newspapers the tremendous success with which our produce has met. We estimate that fully 75 per cent, of the users of Majestic radio sets first were reached and sold on the merits of our products through the extended newspaper campaigns which we have used.” Filled a Gap.

2ZW, the Wellington B class station, came in very well on Monday evening when 2YA was unavoidably off the air. 2ZW announced that her sister station had burnt out one of her transformers and tfcat they would endeavour to fill the position by giving a ringside description of the wrestling match between Alley and Meeske.

A Dominion Record. The one form of entertainment receiving increased patronage in these days is certainly broadcasting. To-day there are more licensed listeners in the Dominion than at any previous time in the history of radio —65,000.

Reception Restricted. Summer static is beginning to be heard at an early hour in the evenings, and one has to go to the more powerful stations for comfortable reception. The past few months have been truly wonderful from a radio reception point of view. Listeners have had stations in practically every corner of the globe to choose from and the great variety of programmes available has naturally spoilt them; they feel hard done by when they are confined by reason of atmospheric conditions to the nearer. Some remarkably fine logs have been compiled by listeners during the past winter, varying from 80 to 120 stations.

Trans-Tasman Stations. The following table, compiled by our regular Wanganui East correspondent, shows the relative signal strengths at which the main Australian stations were received at 9.30 p.m. for the week ended on Tuesday:— Signal Strength. Station. (Maximum R-10) 2FC, Sydney 9 4QG, Brisbane 8 3AR, Melbourne 7 2BL, Sydney 7 7ZL, Hobart 6 3LO, Melbourne 6 4RK, Rockhampton .... 6 2NC, Newcastle 6 SCL, Adelaide ........ 4 6WF, Perth 2 Look to Your Valves! Listeners who have been using their sets steadily during the winter are advised to make an estimate of the number of hours that the valves in the set have been working (some will get a shock when they do!) and if the total is 1000 hours or over they should In justice to the set install a complete lvw set of valves. The improvement wMI be most noticeable. Replacing a single valve in a multi-valve set is like putting one new sparking plug in a car—the difference is not very marked. With a complete new set of valves the receiver takes on new life. Britain’s Licenses. Making due allowance for the difference in population, Great Britain has taken to broadcasting to a greater extent than has Australia, the number of licenses issued on July 1 being 3,756,331 at a fee of 10s a year. This is well over 11 times the Australian total of 331,969 at the same date, although the population is only about seven times as great. Germany with a greater population, had 3,719,594 listeners on the same date.

“Uncle Tom” Retires. Widely known as “Uncle Tom,” Mr. T. T. Garland has retired from the position of station director of IZR, Auckland. Mr Garland, however, has not severed all connection with the station and will continue to conduct the special children’s session at 9 a.m. on Sundays, the children’s session on Wednesdays, and the community singing on Friday evenings.

Dependable Performance. No other radio will give you the dependable performance that you can enjoy with a Majestic. You’ll never know a moment’s trouble from the time you first instal one of these amazing receivers—its brilliant performance ‘will never vary—and you’ll never lose your keenness at being a Majestic owner.* Service! Make use of our Radio Repair Service. Radio is our speciality, therefore bring your repairs to the firm who specialise in this work. All and any classes of sets repaired. Valves may be the cause of poor reception, so bring them in, and we will test them free.— D. A. Morrison £ Co., Avenue.* Depression Solution? Ten years ago trade was in the throes of a serious depression, but radio camo and brought prosperous times. And now all eyes arc focussed on radio and its sister, television. Do they hold the solution? Another Static Eliminator? Two Russians have claimed that they have invented a static eliminator. It is curious how this claim crops up every year or so with monotonous regularity, the only variation being in the nationality of the would-be inventors. Tn the opinion of many experts, complete elimination. of atmospherics is an impos-

Establish Own Factories Now is the time for the New Zealand radio industry to establish its own factories for the manufacture of receivers. The imported set will be considerably more expensive than in the past and that should enable the New Zealand manufacturer to produce a set that has not been pared or skimped to bring it down to a price that compares with that of imported sets. There is no reason why, except perhaps for valves, the whole of the money which has in the past been sent overseas for radio sets cannot be kept in the country. Till radio sets were made a prohibited import into Australia the industry was negligible as such but is now one of the healthiest in the Commonwealth. Changing its Site Permission has been granted by the Australian Postmaster-General’s Department to station 2UE, Sydney, to transfer its transmitter to a site near Lilli Pilli, Port Hacking. The new transmitter will be built by the owners of the station and the power will be increased to 1000 watts in the aerial. The date of transfer has not been settled. Summer Time With the commencement, of summer time in New Zealand last Sunday the Australian programmes will be received half an houi later. Thus the main Australian evening sessions will begin at 10 New Zealand time instead of at 9.30 p.m. “On the Air” Soon A new station, 6PR, Perth, is expected to be on the air shortly. The station will operate on a wavelength of 341 metres (880 k.c.) with a power of 200 watts unmodulated in the aerial. The station, which is a sister plant to the Bendigo station, will bo the most modern in Western Australia, and will be transmitting seven hours a day.

Is Tone Being Sacrificed? During the past year, owing to comparative efforts at price reduction, tone quality has in places been sacrificed, and, as the result, many sets are slipping back in tone quality to the place where the radio industry found itself in 1926 and 1927. This tendency is unsound, and marks a trend which, if allowed to run on for a year or more, will do incalculable harm to radio. On the one hand it will bring in a false standard of sound reproduction, which will disgust the public with radio as an artistic and emotional medium. And the broadcasters who have thus far invested millions in ripping out old equipment and installing new “full-range’’ transmitters, will shortly become discouraged and relav their efforts at firstquality tone transmission, if such transmission is to fall largely on acoustically deaf ears. Meanwhile popular interest will diminish, “listening time” will be reduced, and gradually reduction in the number of feature events and artists will take place. On the other hand, increased naturalness of reproduction has always brought wealth to the industry achieving it. Radio prospered proportionately as its fidelity improved during the years from 1927 to 1929. Again, the moving-picture industry doubled its box office receipts by the introduction of the “talkies,” which brought greater realism and naturalness to the screen. New realisms will always bring new floods of the public money. But to part deliberately from present high standards of realism is eventually to invite financial disaster to radio. The standards of tone must be kept rising. The future of radio, and the future of radio business itself is thus largely in the hands of the radio distributors and radio dealers during the next twelve months. It rests with them as to whether they elect to distribute quality sets which will ensure tone satisfaction and a permanent investment for the public. Or whether they will be satisfied to sell merely a few pounds of wire and metal pared down to a price, and so “get away with it” for the time being. The latter course will mean trouble ahead for everybody. It will result in the collapse of radio and radio broadcasting into a minor business of negligible prestige and volume, instead of fulfilling its present destiny as a dominant art. It is for the radio trade, both distributors and dealers, to see that the public is supplied with receiving sets which are faithful and correct in their reproduction.

“Joy Germ” Evening. The relay by 2YA, Wellington of what was to have been the final community sing, was one of the best evening’s entertainment yet put on by the Broadcasting Company. Thousands of people throughout New Zealand have been eagerly awaiting this concert for week past and there is no doubt that they thoroughly enjoyed every moment. It was a great pity that the concert was interrupted for half an hour to allow Mr Coates to give a speech on unemployment. People had settled down for a real good evening’s entertainment and in not a few cases the “joy germ” was killed by a speech which they would rather have read about in the newspapers. Surely the speech, if necessary, could have been put over between 7.30 and 8 o’clock. The entertainment opened auspiciously with a burlesque wedding, the bridal party entertain the main doors and proceeding up the main aisle to the platform to the accompaniment of shrieks of laughter. The bride was Miss Listener (Mr Fred Parker), who was married to Mr Frank Crowther on the stage by the “Rev.” Owen Pritchard. Mr Albert Russell was the best man, and Mr Will Mason was the father of the bride. A programme of popular favourite songs was sung with much fervour, under the the leadership of Messrs. Russell, Pritchard and W. Mason. Mrs. Russell sang “Love’s Old Sweet Song” as a solo, and Mr. Owen Pritchard, attired in kilts, made a hit singing “I Love a Lassie/’ In view of Mr. Russell’s early departure for England, it was announced that ho would be accorded a singing farewell in the Town Hall on Saturday, October 31. and this, in all probability would be broadcast.

Ultra Short-Wave Broadcasting It has been the aim in the past for radio broadcasting stations to be heard over as wide an area as possible. This laudable desire cn the part of station owners has, however, caused a large amount of unnecessary interference duo to the limited number of channels available on the so-called ‘ ‘ broadcast band” of wavelengths and tho extraordinarily long range transmissions of many of the higher-powered stations.

The problem has become an acute one in countries where broadcasting stations are numerous and remedial measures are being urgently sought. Recent advices to hand by the technical department of Philips Lamps (N.Z.) Limited, indicate that extensive experiments are being carried out on wavelengths around seven metres. At these very short wavelengths the number of broadcasting channels available becomes very much larger, for example, staggering as 't may seem at first sight, there are as many channels available between wavelengths of seven metres and 7.16 metres as on the whole of the “broadcast band,” i.e., 200-550 metres, or between seven metres and eight metres there are no fewer than five and a-half times the number of channels on the normal broadcast band. Seven metre wavelengths have, however, another very noteworthy property which limits their effective range to some 10 to 12 miles —and it is practically impossible to hear any seven metre station outside this radius. This means that stations separated by only 50 miles distance eoukl transmit on the same wave-length without possibility of mutual interference. Low power is quite effective* in fact, increasing the power a hundredfold or a thousandfold, does not effectively increase the coverage area.

The receiving apparatus is simple and cheap and for purely short range broadcasting these seven mc*re developments will be well worth watching.

One of the pioneer stations is PFPF, operated by Messrs Philips in Amsterdam, Holland, on a wavelength of 7.85 metres.

Police Carry Wireless To investigate rumours of the murder of two white men by aborigines in the Rawlinson ranges, a police party recently left Perth. From Laverton they will proceed to the ranges per camel train, accompanied by Afghans and black trackers. Apart from the crime aspect interest lies in the fact that the party has been equipped with radio by Amalgamated Wireless —a fact unique in Australian poli.e expeditionary history—and it is expected will be able to maintain daily short-wave schedules with Perth Radio. The mobile transmitter obtains power from a hand-driven generator deliverying 400 volts to the plate, and will be operated by Constable S. C. Austin, of the Perth Police Wireless Patrol. The party expect to be absent about six months.