Faint And Jammed

Cook Is. Get Poor Radio Broadcasts from NZ

THOUGH understood to be primarily intended to serve the New Zealand Island Territories —and especially the Cook Islands which, to date, have had no broad cast station of their own—Radio New Zealand is doing a conspicu ously poor job in this direction at the present time.

The transmissions, though con taining excellent programme material, are very poorly received by the Cooks—low signal strength, considerable fading, and interfer ence from overseas jammers com bining to making listening more of an ordeal than a pleasure, especi ally at night, when most wanted.

Often the lower frequency, beamed to Australia, is better received than the frequency intended for islands listeners, and Cook Islands listeners are emphatic that a much lower night frequency would greatly im prove the service. This has been suggested to the station—but, so far, without result.

The jamming seems probably to be accidental, insofar as Radio New Zealand is concerned. It is possible that a Voice of America transmitter, on the same frequency and beamed

to Iron Curtain countries, is being jammed by the extensive Soviet jamming organisation. Such an American station, so beamed, might not be heard in the Pacific, though the jammers might still be heard.

At present. Radio Australia is providing a considerably better ser

vice to the Cook Islands than is Radio New Zealand. One notable failing of the latter, apart from poor reception, is the inconveniently late hour of the news broadcast. This may be satisfactory to Fiji and Samoa —but those Groups already have their own broadcasting service.

JPS, at Rarotonga.