Disapproval has been expressed of many of the broadcast serials and suggestive love songs.  If considered dispassionately by adults, most of these are merely trashy, but quite possibly, and particularly in times like the present, the words of a song, or the incidents of a serial, may more readily give offence.  Obviously, the New Zealand Broadcasting Service can never please each individual listener, but, equally obviously, it should seek to avoid giving any public offence.  The Service seems conscious of its responsibilities and tries to make its programmes generally suitable for family audiences; but it also aims to reflect the standards of its listeners, and some may feel that it should try to raise those standards.

Although the Service considers that it should never give the appearance of dictating what listeners should, or should not, hear, it has its own auditioning standards that should satisfy the morals of the most particular.  Records must first conform with the very strict code of the Broadcasting Service, after which they are classified as suitable for children’s sessions, for general sessions, or only for times when children are assumed not to be listening.  The Service can, and does, reject episodes from overseas features, and in doing so experiences no difficulty with either overseas suppliers or local advertising sponsors.  Restrictions on dollar purchases and the nonavailability of “sponsorable” programmes from the United Kingdom curtail the availability of commercial features, and generally restrict them to those produced in Australia.

On the other hand, the Service points out that listeners have a wide choice of broadcast programmes, advertised well in advance, and it assumes that listeners will be selective in tuning in their sets, and restrictive in not allowing their children to listen after 7 p.m. when programmes specially suited for them cease.  This assumption, however, is not well founded.  Once switched on, the radio frequently stays on, and children are then allowed to continue listening far too long.  Consequently, they not only lose part of their essential sleep, and sometimes even the mental state conducive to sleep, but they hear radio programmes not intended for them.

Just when, how long, and how often, children, adolescents, and even parents listen to the radio is something that has never been accurately determined in New Zealand.  It is well known that young children listen after 7 p.m. and that adolescents listen until a very late hour, particularly on holidays, and for this last-named fact no allowance is made when the programmes are being arranged.  Adolescents listening to the latest songs stimulate the demand for popular sheet music.  It is the words of those “hits” that form the chief target for criticism expressed to this Committee.  Popular songs are transitory in nature, and it is the tune, rather than the words, that makes an impression.

Crime serials for the young, and the not so young, are another target for criticism, but provided that the Service is adamant in its rule that “crime must never pay” loss of sleep is, possibly, the most serious consequence of over-indulgence by child listeners.