Whites Radio Service was trading on Foxton's Main Street in 1960 and stayed in it's site as late as 1987 (and possibly later) according to Kete Horowhenua's Foxton Historical Society posts.
There was an earlier radio shop, owned by a Mister R.Cull, on the same site in 1941.
In 1960 there were just over 577,000 New Zealand radio licences in 1960 and this number was just under 700,000 a decade later so Foxton's radio shop must have been very busy indeed! Even when television arrived it was not portable so radio remained competitive.
But this slide, played during cinema intermissions, was not advertising radios. Instead it was advertising records. With the very conservative stewardship of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service (later the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation) Kiwi airwaves didn't feature many of the most daring rock and pop tracks and none of the protest songs sung on university campuses. If you wanted to hear them you needed to buy a copy of your own!
Note the 'Disneyland' name on one of the pictured labels. Who said Foxton was missing out on overseas trends in music!
MAVtech, the keeper of this slide, is home to Radio Foxton which broadcasts on 105.4FM- FM radio wasn't an option in the 1960s.
Note: This slide has some damage- especially to it's top left hand corner.
