NZ Listener on Papers Past
Following agreement between the National Library and the publishers of the New Zealand Listener magazine late last year, a programme to digitise copies of the Listener got underway.
In the past few days, the first batch, covering the first twenty years of the Listener (1939-1959) was quietly added to Papers Past, with later publications to be added in future.
The first edition of the Listener was published on 30 June 1939 under the editorship of Oliver Duff and posted free to every household. Established under the mantle of the National Broadcasting Service, the Listener was for its first half century a state-owned publication. Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage wrote that it would serve as ‘a useful guide to radio listeners, and should promote still further the popularity of broadcasting’. Already, he noted, 84 per cent of households had licensed radio sets and these were fast becoming ‘an essential means of acquiring entertainment and instructive information’.
It became ‘the country’s only national weekly current affairs and entertainment magazine’.[i] But it was also at the centre of the cultural and literary life of the country. As a piece on Te Ara notes, a remarkable array of writers featured in its pages, including Janet Frame, Allen Curnow, and many others.
And with its monopoly over radio listings and (after 1960) television schedules, it gained a huge circulation, peaking at over 375,000 in 1982. When that monopoly was lifted in the 1980s, many feared for the magazine’s future. But while its circulated dropped significantly, somehow it survived after being privatised in 1990. In April 2020 the magazine closed abruptly during the early stages of the Covid pandemic before resuming publication six months later under new owners.
For anyone interested in twentieth century New Zealand history, the Listener is a vitally important source. In the past I have read old copies on microfilm at the National Library, such as this story on the 1977 release of The Governor.
Its addition to Papers Past is a great boon for historians and other researchers and it will be great to see post-1959 copies added over time.
[i] First issue of New Zealand Listener published, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/first-issue-new-zealand-listener-published, (Manatū Taonga — Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 20-May-2025.
Aku mihi
Vincent O’Malley