Steve
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Post by Steve on Jun 10, 2022 14:26:17 GMT 12
Some might find this interesting - the article mentions other important figures of the day, like Ralph Slade (chief engineer at Philips for a long time, and production controller for radio factories during WW2) and Percy C. Collier of Collier & Beale fame. Most might remember the DB Export advert that painted him as a forward-thinking man-of-the-people type who started a brewery to take on the government and made cheaper beer for the working man - a cute story, but probably not a whole lot of fact in it (his dad owned a brewery)... but hey, it was a cool advert (its on YouTube if you look around for it). But here is the story of the station as told in the NZ Radio Times in 1936 2AQ and Morton Coutts -smaller.pdf (557.7 KB)
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Post by Richard on Jun 12, 2022 10:18:53 GMT 12
I wonder if the brewery was subsidizing the Radio Operations? you wouldn't think that Taihape would have enough advertising revenue to support a radio station? maybe it did in the 1920's ?
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Steve
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Post by Steve on Jun 12, 2022 10:30:47 GMT 12
I think the important thing to remember is that 'radio station' back then didn't mean Magic FM... it was a guy with a one-valve home-built rig who was talking and playing an old gramophone beside a microphone for a couple of hours, maybe once or twice a week... If I could have done that, I would have...
Not to mention, I'm pretty sure at the time that advertising was banned. P&T had very tight regulations around what you could and couldn't do. I'll have to find the story, but it wasn't too many years before this that a young kid was dragged into court and faced a huge fine for building a crystal set.
And I suspect if his dad owned a brewery he probably wasn't too short of $$$s - it's a new spin on the line in that song, "...does your dad own a brewery?" (DON'T look that up at work! 😂 )
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Post by dada on Jun 12, 2022 14:06:00 GMT 12
Bulletin items 5-2 and 14-4 give a bit more detail. Cheers, DC
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