NZHistory, New Zealand history online - radio

Maud Basham

Maud Basham, also known as Aunt Daisy, was famous as the host of a radio show focused on domesticity. Upon the success of the broadcasts, she wrote accompanying cook books, and was awarded an MBE in 1956.

Daisy Basham began her performance career as a choir-member and soloist, as well as a conductor. During this time, she frequently appeared on Auckland radio stations as a writer and singer. Asked to stand in for the vacationing presenter of a children’s programme, she broadcast regularly for two weeks, and the moniker ‘Aunt Daisy’ was born. Soon after, she moved to Wellington on a permanent radio engagement, a position cut short soon after by the depression.

Now the breadwinner for her family, Daisy began taking positions with privately owned radio stations, and eventually landed on the ‘Friendly Road’, a radio church. Here, her job was to welcome listeners at the beginning of each day with a charismatic ‘Good morning everybody’, a signature for which she became tremendously well-known. Given her own morning programme for women, her popularity swelled as ownership of the station changed hands.

From 1936, now on the ZB network, Aunt Daisy was able to promote products of her choosing, and, on some occasions, a product endorsed in the morning would be sold out that afternoon. Whilst these were paid advertisements, Daisy would not promote any goods which she herself had not tested, and thus listeners trusted her implicitly. She would continue to broadcast her daily programme until 1963.

To accompany her programme, there were also at least 10 Aunt Daisy cookbooks, each with handy hints and tips. Having embarked upon a world tour in 1938, she became known in the USA as ‘The Dynamo Down Under’.

By Peter Downes; reworded by Patrick Whatman

Read full biography of Maud Basham (DNZB)

del.icio.us Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Robert Jack

Hello My Dearie became one of the first songs to hit the New Zealand airwaves when physics professor Robert Jack broadcast this country’s first radio programme on 17 November 1921. Transmitted from Dunedin, the broadcast was heard as far away as Auckland.

Robert Jack was born at Quarter in Scotland on 4 November 1877 and educated at the University of Glasgow, the Université de Paris and Göttingen University. He came to New Zealand in 1914 to take up a post as professor of physics at the University of Otago.

Driven by the belief that ‘the whole life of the community will be broadened and educated by being brought into more effective touch with the life of the whole world’, Robert began his research into ‘wireless’ radio. With the help of some equipment from Britain, he and his team from the physics department constructed a small transmitter.

After the success of the first broadcast, the programme continued two nights a week. It comprised announcements, gramophone recordings and live music, some of which was provided by Robert’s wife, Isabella. Radio stations were soon established in New Zealand’s four main centres. Take-up was enthusiastic and by the end of 1927 over 30,000 homes had radio licences.

In 1924 Robert started to experiment with television. Within four years he had managed to transmit pictures across his laboratory, though New Zealanders still had over 30 years to wait for the first non-experimental television broadcast.

Robert died in Dunedin in 1957. His radio transmitter is still owned by the University of Otago and has found a long-term home at the Otago Settlers Museum. The station he founded in 1922, today called Radio Dunedin, is the oldest outside North America and the fifth oldest in the world.

Emma Brewerton

See also: biography of Robert Jack on the DNZB website

del.icio.us Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Radio Hauraki rules the waves

The state’s monopoly of commercial radio broadcasting was challenged by the pirate station Radio Hauraki’s first scheduled transmission from the vessel Tiri in the Colville Channel.

The brainchild of Wellington journalist David Gapes, Hauraki aimed to challenge the ‘stuffy and censorious’ state broadcaster, the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC). When attempts to secure a private broadcasting licence failed, the decision was made to broadcast offshore. There was international precedent for such a move. Radio Caroline, a pirate radio ship in the North Sea, had taken on the BBC in Britain. In both countries, state-controlled broadcasting held little appeal for the young.

By August Radio Hauraki had found its transmission vessel, MV Tiri. The venture had a number of legal hurdles to overcome and the ship was forcibly prevented from leaving Auckland Harbour by the authorities. A court hearing in November finally cleared the way for the Tiri to depart for its new location, the Colville Channel between Great Barrier Island and Coromandel Peninsula.

Test transmissions began in earnest on the evening of 1 December. The station jingle rang out loud and clear: ‘Radio Hauraki, Top of the Dial’. DJ Bob Leahy announced, ‘You’re listening to Radio Hauraki, Top of the Dial, and we’re broadcasting a test transmission on 1480’. The difficulties of broadcasting at sea hit home later that evening when strong winds knocked out the huge transmitter mast on the Tiri and put Hauraki off the air.

Around 9 a.m. on Sunday 4 December on-air tests started up again. At 11 a.m. regular broadcasts began. Listeners heard the sound of seagulls before a prerecorded documentary told the story of the station and its people. The first song played was Matt Munro’s somewhat symbolic (but certainly not rebellious) ‘Born Free’.

Over the next 3½ years further legal challenges and a number of incidents at sea tested the resolve of those involved. Listeners were treated to a ‘blow-by-blow’ commentary of the demise of the Tiri when it hit rocks on Great Barrier Island in January 1968. A replacement vessel, the Kapuni (dubbed Tiri II), also ran aground on several occasions.

In March 1970 the Broadcasting Authority rejected the NZBC’s claims against private broadcasting and awarded licences for the Auckland area to Radio Hauraki and its long-time rival, Radio i. Hauraki’s last broadcast as a pirate station was made on 1 June 1970. ‘Born Free’ closed the transmission. It proved to be a bittersweet moment, as announcer Rick Grant was lost overboard on the return voyage to Auckland that evening.

The New Zealand radio scene today is vastly different from that in 1966. In place of a few state-run stations, there is now a crowded, highly competitive commercial market.

Image: Radio Hauraki 40th anniversary logo (Radio Heritage Foundation)

First trans-global radio transmission to London

From the family sheep station in Shag Valley, East Otago, amateur radio operator Frank Bell sent a ground-breaking Morse code transmission. It was received and replied to by London-based amateur operator Cecil Goyder.

Frank and his older sister Brenda were to become world radio pioneers. Their father, Alfred, was a keen amateur scientist and set up what was probably the first telephone connection in New Zealand between two farmhouses in Shag Valley. As a boy Frank made his own crystal set and spent long periods listening to radio signals on it.

Frank was invalided home in 1917 after military service in France and Belgium. While recuperating, he revived his interest in wireless communication. With a small group of other amateur enthusiasts he helped pioneer the use of short radio waves to communicate over long distances, initially through Morse-code telegraphy. He achieved a number of radio transmission firsts, including New Zealand’s first overseas two-way radio contact with Australia and North America. But it was his two-way radio conversation with London on the evening of 18 October 1924 that made world headlines.

The humble and publicity-shy Bell found himself elected – in his absence – to the executive committee of the International Amateur Radio Union on its formation in Paris in 1925. But at this point he appears to lost interest in radio and turned his attention to running the farm.

Brenda took over the wireless station, becoming New Zealand’s first female amateur radio operator. Maintaining the groundbreaking work of her brother, she became the first New Zealander to contact South Africa in 1927. After the Second World War she moved into professional radio, working as a writer and broadcaster for Dunedin station 4YA.

Equipment used for the 1924 transmission (ODT)

Sound: Aunt Daisy's beetroot chutney recipe

Hear Aunt Daisy give her Beetroot Chutney recipe in this recording from a February 1950, ZB morning show.

This clip requires Flash Player 7 or higher. Download latest Flash Player

Click on arrow to play (2.4mb)

Sound file from Radio New Zealand Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero. Any re-use of this audio is a breach of copyright. To request a copy of the recording, contact Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero. Reference number TX2858.

del.icio.us Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Secret radio at Stalag 383

A man lies on his bunk in a hut, listening to a secret radio at Stalag 383, near Hohenfels in Germany.

Alexander Turnbull Library,
War History Collection
Reference: DA 12389
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

del.icio.us Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

radio

pows

Sound: secret radios in POW camp

POW memories: Secret radios

Hear Peter Howden discussing secret radios, and how these were used in the camp.

This clip requires Flash Player 7 or higher. Download Flash Player 7.

Click on arrow to play (359kb)

Transcript

I presume other camps had radios, they must have done, but in our particular instance we had a very clever Englishman who spoke French fluently and also a shorthand typist and another French Canadian, I think his name was Abraham Levi, but never mind. He was also fluent in languages, and where it came from, I don't know, but they found a crystal and they ... we had a little wire with a crystal it. Where they got the ear-phones from, I don't know - better not to know - and it was set up and every night at nine o'clock or thereabouts we'd have a news bulletin. If it was in French it was easily translated and so we got the B.B.C. and of course the crystals, you can't always pick the right station. Sometimes you'd get a French station or a Spanish station and...

There were a lot of clever fellows in that prisoner of war camp. This chap, a friend - I say a friend of ours - a chap in the next bunk, he was a tinsmith and he made a... waterproof box, which slapped down and went down into the cess pool when anything happened - that was where it [the radio] spent most of the day... This man tapped away. He straightened out milk tins - we had milk-powder was one of the famous things from, especially from Canada, and you got all the - straightened it out and you got all the solder off and solder all round it - ingenuity.

Peter Howden interview, 22.02.02, side 2

del.icio.us Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Maud Basham

Read biography of Maud Basham

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
New Zealand Free Lance Collection (PAColl-0785)
Reference: 1/2-046733; F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

del.icio.us Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

aunt daisy

radio

maud basham

1922 - key events

First radio stations on the air

Following Robert Jack’s experimental broadcasts in late 1921, radio broadcasting stations were established in New Zealand’s four main centres. Wellington’s first station, owned by Charles Forrest’s International Electric Co., opened in February, followed in July by Arthur McClay’s Wellington Broadcasters Ltd. In Dunedin, Fred O’Neill’s British Electrical Engineering Co., Norman Arundel’s British Radio Supply Co. and the Otago Radio Association (later 4XD, today Radio Dunedin) were all broadcasting by the end of the year, as was Radio Service Ltd in Auckland and the Radio Society of Christchurch.

None of these stations were on air for more than a few hours per week, and there were then fewer than 1000 radio listeners in New Zealand. But, as elsewhere in the Western world, radio would soon take the country by storm. In 1925 there would be 4702 radio listeners’ licences in the country; by 1935 there would be 152,808, and by 1940, a massive 345,682.

Committee probes ‘scarlet scourge’ of VD

In July 1922, at the urging of the New Zealand Branch of the British Medical Association, the Minister of Public Health set up a Committee of Inquiry to report on the prevalence and causes of venereal disease, and ‘to advise as to the best means of combating and preventing’ it. The committee’s main concern was ‘the occurrence of promiscuous sexual intercourse’, which it blamed on ‘moral laxity’ among young people (especially girls), weakening parental control, delayed marriage, overcrowded urban housing and ‘the restlessness of the age’. It recommended limited sex education, some improvements to treatment at VD clinics and ‘conditional notification’ for VD patients, but stopped short of more radical proposals such as compulsory notification or the detention of those infected. Its report concluded that:

It must be obvious to every thinking person that looseness of conduct between the sexes as is shown to exist in New Zealand is destructive to the high ideals of family life associated with the finest types of British manhood and womanhood, and if not checked must lead to the decadence of the nation.

US prohibitionist tours New Zealand

The legendary American prohibition campaigner William E. ‘Pussyfoot’ Johnson toured New Zealand to mobilise temperance supporters ahead of December’s national licensing referendum. Despite agonisingly narrow defeats in two 1919 polls, the prohibitionist cause remained a powerful mass movement throughout the 1920s. Both the liquor trade and its ‘no license’ opponents spent heavily on election advertising in the run-up to each referendum. Pussyfoot’s presence wasn’t enough in 1922, though, as the prohibition vote again fell just short of a majority with 48.6% support.

Catholic bishop tried for sedition

Sectarian tensions between New Zealand Protestants and Catholics festered during and after the Great War, partly as a result of events in Ireland, especially the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. The Protestant Political Association emerged as a powerful anti-Catholic force, and many Catholics felt that they were being made scapegoats for wartime and post-war problems.

On St Patrick’s Day 1922, during a speech in the Auckland Town Hall, Bishop James Liston criticised the Anglo–Irish Treaty, praised the dead rebels of 1916 (he apparently said they had been ‘murdered by foreign troops’), and predicted a successful fight for Ireland’s freedom. Amid a flurry of Protestant outrage, the Reform government announced that Liston would be prosecuted for making seditious utterances. After a two-day trial in Auckland’s Supreme Court in mid-May, the bishop was acquitted by an all-Protestant jury.

Other events in 1922:

William Massey’s Reform Party retained power in December’s general election, despite winning only 39% of the vote in a three-way fight with the Liberals and Labour. Incoming results were broadcast on radio for the first time.
This was also the first general election to include the Chatham Islands. The islanders voted in either the Lyttelton general electorate or Western Maori (the latter reflected the tribal affiliations of the Chathams’ Māori population).
In response to the 1921–22 recession, the Meat Producers’ Board was established to coordinate the production, transport and marketing of farm produce.
New Zealand’s first Poppy Day was held on 24 April, the day before Anzac Day. More than 260,000 poppies were sold, earning £13,166 (equivalent to $1.2 million in 2011) to help war-ravaged areas of northern France and assist unemployed returned soldiers and their families.
The New Zealand government offered support to Britain when the Chanak crisis threatened to reignite war with Turkey. Within two weeks 13,000 men and 400 nurses volunteered to serve, but conflict was averted.
In November Seamen’s Union members began a nationwide strike in protest at cuts to wages and conditions ordered by the Arbitration Court. The dispute, which lasted until January 1923, ended in crushing defeat for the unionists.
The New Zealand Federation of University Women was established to provide a contact network for women graduates and grants to female students.
The Forests Act was passed, establishing the State Forest Service.
The Correspondence School was opened to provide lessons to about 100 isolated primary schoolchildren scattered throughout New Zealand.