ENG-1955 — Page 226

PRESS, BROADCASTING AND FILMS

175

the news, has achieved a high standard in the technique of actuality reporting and interviewing.

Live variety shows include, on the English Service, the popular amateur talent series, "Beginners Please", while the Chinese service can probably claim to have presented the first Chinese version of "Twenty Questions". Both services recently introduced "Popularity Poll", in which listeners are invited to name the three most popular tunes of the week. This programme has attracted as many as 663 letters a week for the Chinese version, and 220 for the English.

A review of the year's programmes amounts, in fact, to a miniature review of the year. Few of the year's distinguished visitors left without appearing in front of the microphone. They included the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Krishna Menon, Dr. P. S. Lokanathan, and an imposing array of names from the musical, literary, artistic, and sporting world. Notable among the broadcasts during the Festival of the Arts was a Chinese version of Ibsen's "The Master Builder", the Chinese programme's most ambitious production to date. Major outside broadcasts included the dedication of the Sai Wan Military Cemetery, the British Forces Tattoo, and the Annual Cross-Harbour Swimming Race. Anti-typhoid and anti-diphtheria campaigns sponsored by the Medical Department were supported with talks and special features. The candidates in the Urban Council elections were heard on both services.

The British Broadcasting Corporation supplies first-class material on transcription, the greater portion of plays, dramatic features and variety programmes broadcast by the English service being obtained from this source. Other organizations that have supplied transcribed material are the Australian Broadcasting Commission, the Canadian Broad- casting Corporation, Radio Nederland, West German Radio, and United Nations Radio. From the last-named the Chinese section of Radio Hong Kong translated into Cantonese and adapted with considerable success the United Nations Day feature, "Charter in a Saucer." Programmes were exchanged with Radio Malaya, and plans are being completed to increase this practice, especially as regards Chinese programmes. Radio Hong Kong supplied a number of despatches to the BBC's Radio Newsreel and made regular contributions to their "Asia on the Air" series. News bulletins and a number of programmes from the BBC are relayed daily.