Broberg, Lindsay

Getting it Across - With Just a Touch of Colour!

A TV Profile by Molly G. Elliott from the New Zealand TV Weekly. May 15, 1967

While admitting that there's no glamour in the newscaster's role. AKTV2's Lindsay Broberg maintains that it still affords cpportunifies for personality to shine through.

Athough thousands of viewers see him regularly, AKTV2 newscaster, Lindsay Broberg, shies away from publicity because he feels that his role does not demand it. Besides, he has a humility uncommon among those literally in the public eye.

Auckland-born. he has returned home after several stints away: three and a-half years' war service in Fiji 12 years attached to Rotorua's national and commercial stations, two years as an immigration omcer in London.

He began his career in the printing trade, serving a composi\tor's apprenticeship witih Wright and Jacques Ltd, an old-established Auckland firm. They printed all the theatre programmes which may have spurred on Lindsay's interest in the stage. He belonged to both the Auckland Operatic Society and Repertory Theatre, and helped found Rotorua's Little Theatre, for which he was also a producer.

The war altered his life, as it did to so many others. He has now racked up seventeen years in broadcasting, in the midst of which he was seconded to the Labour Department and based at New Zealand House, from where he travelled all over the United Kingdom and Eire interviewing prospective settlers-and attending the theatre whenever possible even in such out-of-the way places as Dundee.

At this stage, he had no thought of TV apart from the viewers' angle, having seen something of it in Sweden, France and England. On his return to New Zealand, he was asked to audition. If nothing else, he felt he should adapt to the change and find out if the public would accept him. At the play-back, he felt physically sick and fled from the studio-but he came back and has stayed.

After eadio's comfortlable anonymity, he felt ermbarrassed at obvious public recognition. Even on a recent holiday in Cairns, Kiwi tourists hailed him. While swimming at Green Island, he surfaced near a brace of Aucklanders who not only yelled Lindsay Broberg! but lost no time telling other visitors that they had one oi Auckland's leading TV personalities among them.

Fontunately, instant recognition has brought only goodwill. Criticism?- Naturally, but not unpleasant. If it had become abusive, he would have given TV away since he could not stand constant unpopularity. When he goes on, he simply tries to do his best and lets the public form its own opinion.

You must take the objective view -and simply try, he says. In TV's early days, readers including Lindsay, doubled as interviewers, but with the news section etficiently organised this no longer happens. Nevertheless, shift work has completely scuttled social life and he has had to give up cricket, tennis and golf.

News readers are supposed to be impersonal, he said, folding shirt-sleeved arms, but because TV is a communicating agency, personality must come through la little if only to get the material across. Without colouring the news, the reader must act as a link between it and the viewers.

If he submerges his personality absolutely, the news comes out as so much dialogue snippeted up into mouthfuls and sung to the tune of Queen's Regulations. Given an amusing piece, the reader must inject a light note to prevent its sounding like a pretentious form of reading aloud. At the same time, he must not set himself up as an entertainer with a sprightly forehead, must not develop the clown's desire to play Lear or declaim his way through Hamlet's thickets of baronial skirmishings.

Contrary to public belief, says Lindsay, the news reader does not. have a glamorous job. Like people in hundreds of prosaic jobs, he does it daily and must present a calm, relaxed appearance no matter how he feels. Viewers' acceptance is his acknowledgement of a job well done.