in the training of the new technicians required to operate the expanded and improved programmes. The basic course consisted of experimental work and lectures in sound and acoustics, microphones, amplifiers, record reproduction, console handling, recordings and line transmission, and was completed in February.
Operational technique.
117. It was for long a point of contention in broadcasting in Britain, and still is in the United States, as to whether the control operator, i.e. the man who turns the knobs and is responsible for balance and control, should be an engineer, or an artist, or a combination of both.
B.B.C. practice, until a few years ago, was that he should be primarily an engineer, and should be recruited for his engineer- ing qualifications. This is still the practice in Hong Kong. But just as elsewhere, experience has shown that the ability to understand how an amplifier works and to mend it if it goes wrong does not necessarily imply the ability to operate it. This year therefore, consideration was given to a plan for training technical operators as opposed to technicians. The development of 'sound appreciation', of treating a broadcast as an association of sounds, blended together, requires much experience. It re- quires virtually the ability to think purely in terms of sound, to blind oneself to the studio, artists, scripts and apparatus, to know how to use all these things instinctively to produce the best possible programmes.
To achieve this, the B.B.C. has split its technical operators away from its technicians, and it is likely that in the next few years the technical operations of Radio Hong Kong will follow the same pattern.
Studio and equipment.
118. There was little change in the studios or equipment used during the year. Artificial echo facilities were provided by using an office as an echo chamber. This was partially success- ful, but better results were obtained from a 'live' room with brick walls and concrete floor and ceiling in another building, and this will be used as permanent echo chamber when the necessary microphones and amplifiers are delivered.
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