Charles Moses

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the Ghanaian Olympic sprinter, see Charles Moses (athlete). For the U.S. politician (Georgia), see Charles L. Moses. For the U.S. politician (Virginia), see Charles T. Moses. For the mayor of Biddeford, Maine, see Charles M. Moses.

Sir Charles Moses
CBE
Charles Moses delivering his speech at the opening of the ABC.
General manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission
In office
1935–1965
Preceded byWalter Conder
Succeeded bySir Talbot Duckmanton
Personal details
Born
Charles Joseph Alfred Moses

(1900-01-21)21 January 1900
Westhoughton, Lancashire, England
Died9 February 1988(1988-02-09) (aged 88)
Turramurra, New South Wales, Australia
Nationality
  • British
  • Australian
Spouse
Kathleen (Kitty) O'Sullivan
​
​
(m. 1922⁠–⁠1988)​
Education
Allied occupation of the Rhineland
Irish War of Independence

Second World War:
Military awards
Mentioned in Despatches
(1943)

Sir Charles Alfred Joseph Moses

Australian Broadcasting Commission
(ABC) from 1935 until 1965.

A 1918 graduate of the

British Commandos
.

After the war ended, the ABC created its own news organisation. It expanded its audience in rural areas through the new

radio serial, Blue Hills. With the arrival of television in Australia in 1956, Moses oversaw the ABC's move to provide Australia's first national television service in time for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne
.

Early life

Charles Joseph Alfred Moses was born at Woodlands Farm in

Great War, he joined the 2nd Battalion, the Border Regiment, and served in the Occupation of the Rhineland. In 1919, the 2nd Battalion moved to Ireland, where the Irish War of Independence had broken out.[1]

There, he fell in love with an Irish girl, Kathleen (Kitty) O'Sullivan of Castlebar in County Mayo. Courting her was dangerous; to see her he had to ride up to 30 kilometres (19 mi) on a bicycle along country roads controlled by the anti-British Irish Republican Army armed with a Webley Revolver.[2] They were married in the Catholic Church at Aughrim Street in Dublin on 3 June 1922.[1] They had a son, Tom, and a daughter, Kathleen.[2]

Peacetime soldiering not being to his liking, Moses resigned his commission later that year; the newlyweds emigrated to Australia to join the rest of his family, who had emigrated in 1919. He used his payout from the British Army to buy the family farm in

Bendigo, Victoria.[1] Although he knew a great deal about cattle and sheep farming in England from having grown up on a farm there, tomato and citrus growing in Australia was quite different. The farm was not a success, and he lost all his money. He moved to Melbourne where he tried selling real estate, and worked as a physical training instructor. He also sold cars for six years before the onset of the Great Depression, when he found himself out of work.[2]

Moses applied for a position as a radio announcer at the

soccer, cricket and hockey while in the Army; but he had no knowledge of ice hockey. He read up on the sport and called the game. His broadcast was successful, and he was invited to join the ABC a week later, in August 1930.[3]

Over the next few years, Moses became well known as a sport caster, calling the rugby and The Ashes matches of the Australian cricket team in England in 1934 from telegraphed despatches as if the commentary was live from the venue.[1][4] He became the ABC's Sporting Editor in Sydney in January 1933, the Federal Controller of Talks in September 1934, the Federal Liaison Officer in August 1935, and finally, in November 1935, the general manager.[2][5] His predecessor, Walter Conder, had been in conflict with the chairman of the ABC, William James Cleary. Conder had wanted to give the listeners what he thought they wanted: sports and entertainment; Cleary wanted to give them what he thought they should have: discussion and high culture. Inevitably, Cleary won the argument.[6]

Cleary and Moses fostered Australian talent and promoted original content, but they also brought out overseas artists like

Lotte Lehman, and Arthur Rubinstein. Concert organisers charged that the ABC had no right to break monopolies by producing its own concerts. A compromise was reached, whereby the ABC was permitted to broadcast any concert for which admission was charged. Access to news produced a similar problem, with the ABC confronting Keith Murdoch's powerful News Limited, which had great influence over conservative politicians like Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies. Without its own news-gathering organisation, the ABC was dependent on News Limited. When war broke out in September 1939, Moses decided to broadcast the news independent of News Limited. Menzies refused to back the ABC.[2]

Second World War

Moses volunteered for service with the

Major General Gordon Bennett.[7][8][9]

As liaison officer to the

11th Indian Division,[10] Moses twice narrowly escaped ambushes.[1] On 11 February 1942, he had a conversation with Bennett's aide, Lieutenant G. H. Walker, in which he expressed a desire to escape if Singapore fell, as seemed likely at that point. Five days later, Moses, Bennett and Walker escaped from Singapore in a sampan, and made their way to Sumatra. They crossed Sumatra to Padang, on its west coast, from whence they flew to Java. In Batavia, Moses was knocked down by a taxi, fracturing his ribs. He was diagnosed with scrub typhus, and placed on the dangerously ill list. He was evacuated by a Dutch freighter and taken to Perth where he was hospitalised at the 110th and 113th General Hospitals. After the war he strongly supported Bennett's decision to escape from Singapore.[11][12][1][8]

On 9 October 1942, he was appointed commander of the Port Moresby Base Area, then engaged in

mentioned in despatches on 10 August 1943.[14]

Later life

While he was in hospital recovering from malaria, Moses received a personal letter from the Prime Minister of Australia, John Curtin. His Australian Labor Party had always been treated roughly by the newspapers, particularly the Murdoch press, and when it had come to power in 1941, it had instructed the ABC to ignore its agreements with the news agencies, and to gather its own news. Curtin feared that unless Moses was at the helm, the ABC would revert to sourcing all its news from the agencies. Moreover, Curtin wanted the ABC to develop a sense of national identity, and to provide the workers and service personnel with more entertainment. This last task inevitably set Moses up for a clash with Cleary, but now it was the general manager who held the cards, and Cleary resigned on 30 March 1945.[2]

Governor General of Australia, Viscount De L'Isle

In February 1945, Moses attended the Empire Broadcasting Conference in London, and was invited to see how the war in Europe was being reported by the

British Commandos.[2] He was awarded the France and Germany Star.[8]

After the war ended, the Australian Broadcasting Act (1946) charged the ABC with responsibility for gathering its own news.

Sydney City Council to create an ABC orchestra. Soon there were ABC orchestras in all the state capitals.[2]

A major change was the introduction of television in 1956. The Labor Party had, in June 1949, pledged to introduce television into Australia as soon as possible, but it had lost office later that year, and the

Menzies government was opposed to television, which Menzies hoped would never come to Australia. Nonetheless, he was unable to stem the tide of public opinion, and the Broadcasting and Television Act (1956) allowed for television in Australia just in time for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. The addition of television caused a spurt of growth at the ABC, as staff numbers grew from 2,000 in 1956 to 3,000 in 1960, while the budget doubled from £3.7 million to £7.4 million.[16]

By the late 1950s, Moses' good relations with the politicians were a thing of the past. In October 1957, the

Australian Parliament was in recess.[1] In 1963, Menzies ordered Moses not to broadcast a BBC interview with Georges Bidault, the former Prime Minister of France, who was living in exile after conspiring against the government of Charles de Gaulle. Moses sent copies of the video to commercial stations, and it was broadcast by the Nine Network in Sydney and the Seven Network in Melbourne.[17]

Moses retired in 1965 and was succeeded as head of the ABC by Sir

Commander of the Order of British Empire in the 1954 Birthday Honours,[19] and was knighted in the 1961 Birthday Honours.[20] From 1965 to 1977, he served as the first Secretary-General of the Asian Broadcasting Union (now known as the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union), a non-profit professional association of broadcasters.[1] He published a book on it, Diverse Unity: The Asian-Pacific Broadcasting Union, 1957–1977 in 1978.[1] He became a foundation member of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust in 1954, and helped with the design competition for the Sydney Opera House, becoming a foundation member of the Sydney Opera House Trust in 1961. In 1969, he became vice president of the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales.[1]

Death and legacy

Moses died at Turramurra in Sydney on 9 February 1988, and his remains were cremated.[1] He had a son named Tom; his daughter Kathleen had died in 1960.[2] The Charles Moses Stadium at the Sydney Showground at Sydney Olympic Park was named in his honour.[21]

Notes

  1. ^
    ISSN 1833-7538
    . Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  2. ^
    ISSN 1835-2340. Retrieved 11 July 2017.[predatory publisher
    ]
  3. ^ "Pen, Pencil and Personality: Charles Moses". Table Talk. No. 3543. Victoria, Australia. 2 April 1936. p. 18. Retrieved 11 July 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. Tweed Daily
    . Vol. XXII, no. 242. New South Wales, Australia. 9 October 1935. p. 4. Retrieved 11 July 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ^ "Broadcasting". The Canberra Times. Vol. 9, no. 2542. 5 November 1935. p. 1. Retrieved 11 July 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. ^ "The 6WF Story – Part 2 of 3". WA TV History. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  7. ^ "Mr. Charles Moses". The Sydney Morning Herald. No. 31, 946. 20 May 1940. p. 8. Retrieved 11 July 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  8. ^
    National Archive of Australia
    . NAA: B883, NX12404. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  9. ^ Wigmore 1957, p. 86.
  10. ^ Wigmore 1957, p. 274.
  11. ^ "Moses's Decision to Escape". The Sydney Morning Herald. No. 33, 676. 28 November 1945. p. 4. Retrieved 11 July 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  12. ^ Wigmore 1957, pp. 381–384.
  13. ^ McCarthy 1959, p. 508.
  14. ^ "Mentioned in Despatches". The London Gazette. No. 36129. 10 August 1943. p. 3626.
  15. ^ Inglis 2006, pp. 153–155.
  16. ^ Inglis 2006, pp. 193–196.
  17. ^ Inglis 2006, pp. 252–253.
  18. ^ Inglis 2006, p. 256.
  19. ^ "Commander of the Order of British Empire". The London Gazette (1st supplement). No. 40189. 10 June 1954. p. 3297.
  20. ^ "Knight bachelor". The London Gazette (1st supplement). No. 42371. 2 June 1961. p. 4179.
  21. ^ Bodey, Michael (1 April 2016). "Michelle Guthrie faces a baptism of fire at the ABC". The Australian. Retrieved 11 July 2017.

References

External links
Media offices
Preceded by
Walter Conder
Australian Broadcasting Commission

1935–1965 		Succeeded by
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