Hey as mentioned yesterday here's some interesting developments on the Gus Fisher / Radio front...
Over the 'break' I did a bit more research on stuff around the history of that building as I already had some info from thinking about doing something there a while back, and the more I learnt, especially about radio at that time, the more the more sense it made to use it the way we were thinking and the more compelling the history became to the content our projects might generate....
I think we all know (and the text that Sonya sent us from Linda Tyler has a lot of excellant stuff on this) this building was the first purpose-built broadcasting station, state-radio at that, in Aotearoa/NZ, and the fact that it was built at all during the depression of the '30's was largely due to the political pressure of our famous Labour Party leader of the time Michael Joseph Savage.?
Savage is a significant figure as a committed socialist who actually brought functioning socialism into New Zealand mainstream politics as the leader of the Labour Party and first Labour prime minister in 1935.?
At the time the 1YA building was being built he was touring the country campaigning at the expense of proper treatment for illness which turned out to be cancer, cutting his influential career short at his death in 1940 (1 term as PM).
He was also instrumental in setting up the Labour/Ratana alliance (the first mainstream attempt for Maori representation in Government) and he was honoured with a memorial on Bastion Point, right next to the Ngati Whatua Marae we visited (remember that cliff-top mausoleum and obelisk you wandered off and photographed while we were up there Lu Jie?).
His death signaled the end of a short-lived hey-day for radical left politics in this country. Other more centrist members of the Labour party took the opportunity to seize control and left two core allies of Savage, John A. Lee and Colin Scrimgeour in vulnerable positions.
Scrimgeour - affectionately known as 'Uncle Scrim' - had come to prominence as an enormously popular early radio broadcaster and as a humanitarian and champion of the Working Class and Union's was an obvious choice for Savage to appoint as the controller of The National Broadcasting Service.
In fact many think he was instrumental in Savage and Labour's success in the elections in the first place as the former coalition government tried numerous times to shut down his radio station, presented ostensibly as a kind of non-denominational Church station to get around restrictive censorship laws, and called The Friendly Road (!! His own show was called The Man On The Street!). They actually 'jammed' this broadcast on the Sunday evening before the election and ensuing riot on Queen St and controversy certainly contributed to Labour's sweeping victory.
There is more fascinating stuff about this character in particular too (he was tragically conscripted into the army later in a deliberate attempt to 'remove' him) but this is the stuff I thought most resonant and fun to build on for broadcast content.
I have a good friend who completed his doctorate with an 'ambient / collage' sound-piece in relation to this history that I think it would be great to broad cast - perhaps as a regular feature?
I also think we should develop some ideas for interviews with Ngati Whatua which can be perhaps done up on Bastion Point, maybe even some like field recordings around the Savage Memorial... perhaps stuff relating to the waterfront land itself - such as the site where the Stadium was being built...
I also thought we might be able to approach some of the local Chinese and Maori Stations about routing their programmes thru our transmitter so that at times our station just operates as a kind of conduit to bring together existing initiatives, these confluences in themselves being meaningful...and keeping our programme dynamic... it might have repeated/set daily programmes (such as interviews) interspersed with 'envelopes' that bounce on specific but uncontrolled broadcasts from elsewhere - this way a sort of timetable could be drawn up to allow peoples specific pieces to be tuned into and caught and other ongoing things to be feed in - I will talk to Andrew about the logistics of all this.
Hope this is of interest / use,
let me know any thoughts...
See you at the meeting tomorrow Kah Bee and we'll report back soon no-doubt!
Ciao,
malone
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