Broadcasting House

Status of Fiji’s New Broadcasting House

BROADCASTING House, the Suva headquarters of the Fiji Broad casting Commission, will be officially declared open on July 1. It will be an occasion of some public importance.

The new establishment and organisation were described in May PIM. Apropos of that, the Chair man of the Commission (Mr. R. L.

Munro) has written to point out “serious errors.” He says the Com mission is not “controlled by the Government” —that it is an inde pendent statutory body.

We used the term loosely, but we do not withdraw the implication.

The Australian Broadcasting Com mission is a similar statutory body, nominally independent; but the ABC is and always has been very careful to do nothing that will place it out of favour with the Government of the day. It is the modern set-up; and not necessarily a bad set-up.

Mr. Munro also challenges our statement that the new establish ment has the most modern technical equipment and technique: "Broadcasting House itself is in deed modern and spacious and a credit to the Colony. Its technical equipment, however, as specified by the Fiji Government and now be ing installed by Amalgamated Wire ness (Australia) Ltd., as the Gov ernment’s consulting engineers, has decided limitations: and, to enable the Commission to carry out its

plans to give the people of Fiji a greatly improvsd and expanded service, additional and more modem equipment will have to be installed as soon as the completed structure is taken over by the Commission next month.

“The Commission's engineers re port ' that the technical facilities now being installed are so far from being ‘equal to anything in the world’ as to be inferior even to those of New Zealand’s small 2 kilowatt “X’ class stations!”

The new broadcasting station studios and ihe administrative block for the Fiji Broadcasting Commission, in Suva, which will be officially opened on July 1.