Telephone Subscription

Last week six high-speed stenographers locked in a soundproof room of the offices of Australia's Sydney Telegraph scribbled furiously in relays. With earphones on his head and a radio-borne voice from the Telegraph's Manhattan office pouring a torrent of words into his ears, each stenographer scribbled frantically for about 1,000 words, then dropped out to rest while another took his place. Thus in about three hours, through 8,000 miles of air, at a cost for the telephone bill of about -L-400 ($1,300) a week, TIME'S entire Foreign News and World War sections have been transmitted for publication as a supplement to the Telegraph.

The original idea was that of an imaginative press syndicate head, David Yaffa, who sold it to Australia's liveliest publisher, youthful (34), two-fisted Frank Packer. Gold-mining tycoon Frank Packer is co-owner of Australia's Consolidated Press, Ltd. as well as publisher of Australia's most up-& -coming paper, the Sydney Telegraph.

Last week Publisher Packer went a step further, ordered from the Yaffa syndicate 6.000 words of the radiophoned copy for his thriving Australian Women's Weekly (a lively sort of Australian Ladies' Home Journal), the biggest magazine in Australia (circulation over 450,000). At the same time David Yaffa also sold the TIME copy to the New Zealand Observer, had hot deals afoot with several papers in the Dutch East Indies.

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