4TO turns 75 this month and Bridget Griffen-Foley, who is writing Changing Stations: The Story of Australian Commercial Radio, has contributed this glimpse into the first days of the station.
When 4TO opened on 5 October 1931, few people in Townsville even owned a radio set. There had not been much point, with the nearest station located 600 miles away.
AWA sent Harold Edward Cox to open its new station. On the opening night Cox contrived to get two local musical societies to broadcast, with residents declaring it one of the best concerts that had ever been heard in Townsville.
In Cox’s words, he worked ‘like a Trojan’ for twelve months to make 4TO viable, persuading local businesses of the value of radio advertising and residents of the need for a radio set in their living rooms. He was always on the look-out for a stunt to promote the station. When one of the locals decided to stage a bull-fight and managed to find three Spaniards to act as the matadors, Cox was there with a mike by his side. When a circus came to town, Cox went into the ring to capture the sound of a lion’s roar. Only the timely intervention of a keeper prevented Cox from entering the cage.
Like his counterparts at other country stations, Cox was much more than simply the manager. He did everything from cleaning out batteries to reciting Shakespeare, from installing frequency stabilizers to reading bedtime stories, from playing parts in plays (‘Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen, Germans, and old men’) to creating sound effects. During the children’s session he was ‘Uncle Hector’, taking his own initials (‘HEC’), the call sign of his station (‘TO’), and ‘R’ for radio.
4TO began by broadcasting from 6.30 to 7pm and 8 to 10.15pm, but the hours of transmission were gradually extended. A continuing source of frustration for listeners was poor reception, particularly through the day and in the summer. The radio magazines that reported on Cox’s exploits and interviewed him during his holiday in Sydney in 1936 also carried letters from disgruntled Queenslanders. A Charters Towers resident thought that city folk should never complain about what they received on radio because they had the luxury of being able to spin the dial.
AWA went on to obtain a radio licence for Cairns in 1935. Cox was delighted, telling the Postmaster-General’s Department that it had been pathetic to sit on a train and see houses ‘which should have been fitted with radio sets and were not so fitted. We look forward to the time, due primarily to the establishment of 4CA, when all these cane farmers will have their wireless sets’.