The Editors Maillag
p. 27 · Read in the full issue
ibute to New Guinea's
inces Seeto
1 reader who wants to be known y as an ex-Angauite (and date ng his letter “Anzac Day”) has to say about the subject of the tt Hilder profile, page 76, April 4: Tiis item inadequately describes sterling and untiring nursing ser ;s this devoted woman gave her ow evacuees and the local popula i of Mussau Island during the ertain war years. ls a result of privations suffered ing the Jap occupation of New and, the majority of evacuees e afflicted with malnutrition, de ;ncy diseases, malaria, etc. Fran- Seeto —or Seeto Fung Ho—was call day and night and her unsel and untiring efforts were an leasurable assistance in keeping morale. i a world of destructive war she just a little woman on a little ific island, but she quietly and erously contributed her best, ny people who knew her would, sure, like to join me in wishing a “thousand and one summers”, c and happiness.
Jio Entertainment
d Advertising
’ossing literary lightning bolts, Mr.
McCready, of Lautoka, Fiji, gets r the Fiji Broadcasting Commis i, particularly for the fact that iough a listener’s licence costs -, this does not prevent listeners ing their ears assaulted by adver igays he: Subscribers are expertly trapped the lure of only a 25/- licence not realising that the advertisers the balance to ensure our listen attention to their endlessly re ted slogans. Has the Commission right to batter our sensibilities i advertising slogans, when they spt our fees for entertainment?
Several brands of cigarettes ad :ised are all the ‘BEST EVER’ in each has its turn for adula i. All soaps and patent medi is, whatever the brand, are the ST EVER’ too, and this is pro med by broadcasters who private might not tolerate any of them.
Those of us who fortunately have isistors, tune into the national ions in Australia or New Zea
land and thus retain our sanity, otherwise the soaps with creamy lather and gentle olive oil, the tooth pastes that get into hidden crevices, and rival patent medicines with their universal panaceas, would reduce us all to cretins.
“There must be a psychological reason why slogans are never altered and endlessly thrown at our ear drums like the Chinese torture of drops of water falling on the same spot on a person’s skull until re sistance gives way.”
The reason that Mr. McCready has to suffer is £.s.d. At the end of 1961 there were 26,102 listeners’ licences issued in Fiji, which would bring in revenue of about £33,000; in the same year, revenue from ad vertising was £61,000 —and the Fiji Government still made a grant of £26,000 to the Commission and paid a subsidy of nearly £9,000 to make FBC ends meet. In 1962 the grant will be £28,500 but the subsidy will be very small.
In Australia a radio listener’s licence is £2/15/- and a TV licence is £5 where there is a population of 10,000,000 to help pay the bill for national non-advertising stations.
Strangely, from Mr. McCready’s point of view, the great majority of listeners and viewers apparently pre fer to take their entertainment along with the tooth pastes that get into hidden crevices and the soaps with the added lanoline.
Most radio and TV advertising is aimed at the lowest-common-denomi nator in the community, but because sponsors obviously get results (why else would they go on paying the extraordinarily high rates for this sort of advertising?) they probably have good reason to believe that the mental age of the average listener or viewer is about 12.
Good Pacific Maps
For those people who were com plaining about the lack of good Pacific maps in November PIM. we have this piece of information from Mr. R. D. Morrel, of Butterfield & Swire (Japan) Ltd., Tokyo: “A map that I have found quite useful is the National Geographic Magazine’s ‘Pacific Ocean’ map. It covers the whole Pacific but has nu merous insets giving enlarged maps of separate islands and island groups.
“I found this a useful map in con nection with my company’s South Pacific Service, which operates to
New Guinea and the South Pacific.” [Warning to Jumpers to Conclu sions’. Mr. Morrel does not mean that the China Navigation Co. ships sail over the Pacific with the aid of a National Geographic map. He means that he finds it is easier to pin-point their position from this 4ft. by 3ft. map than to spread the whole of the navigation charts of the China Sea and SW Pacific all over his office.]
Workers in the
Lord's Vineyard
Not everyone thinks PIM has a Roman Catholic bias (see letter in April, p. 32). The Rev. R. E. S.
Taylor, a retired Methodist mission ary from Papua, writes to tell us so, and say some pleasant things about the Catholic Mission in Papua.
He recalls nostalgically his first arrival in Papua 43 years ago on the old S.S. Marsina which, as BP ships did in those days, called at Yule Island, RC Mission headquar ters. He said the missionaries in vited him to morning tea and showed him their establishment, and he still remembers it as a pleasant memory.
Later he exchanged letters with the Bishop on Yule Island and he felt that there was a fellowship be tween them in the service of taking Christianity to the Papuans. (Mr. Taylor now lives at Port Macquarie, NSW.)
BACK HOME: Lovely Chinese lass Nancy Seeto, of Rabaul, NG, is back home again after a six months Continental tour. She crossed the Continent by bus from Marseilles and later went on to Hongkong and Japan. "A wonderful £6OO worth", said Nancy.