Comments on: Radio National brouhaha: ABC dumps values for ideology

By: SUZANNE HARRISON

SUZANNE HARRISON — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

ABC management seems to be doing everything in its power to kill off Radio National. The latest nail in its coffin is the introduction of ABC News Breakfast on ABC2 , which is aimed at the audience that until now has provided a devoted following for Radio National Breakfast with Fran Kelly, As ABC2 becomes more accessible and politicians and other luminaries decide they’d prefer to be seen as well as heard, RN Breakfast will lose its attraction and ABC management can safely consign it, along with The Religion Report, the Media Report and The Sports Factor, to the scrapheap.

By: ANON INSIDER

ANON INSIDER — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Radio National was faced with a Coogee Bay sandwich - an exploding online audience meant more resources were needed to feed all those digital buggers only trouble was there were no more resources - no wonder it had to cannibalise itself.

The real tragedy is that despite being called the ‘jewel in the ABC’s crown’ Mark Scott failed to see that we couldn’t do more on-line with no more dough, so the cake had to be re-cut. Now he pretends he didn’t know. Sounds like plausible deniability to me. And now Radio National management have fluffed the exercise…phulease….put me on a panadol drip please before more of us ‘go rogue’.

By: Peter Clarke

Peter Clarke — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

If in fact Kirsten Garrett (whom I have admired greatly for years as a consumate professional) is to be believed in her (personal?) SMH letter that the recent announcements are the product of a year's serious discussion and analysis, then we have more to be worried about than I thought. Her letter was very defensive and smacked of the kind of elitism and go-away sentiment that once she would have decried. If indeed it has been planned for so long, where the hell is the quality and relevant outcome that meets the contemporary media challenges AND accords with the national broadcaster's cultural role? All we have had so far is ham-fisted amateur hour well larded with competing leaks. Even the likes of Meg Simons has found it hard to penetrate the inner-inner-inner workings of the ABC especially the realities surrounding the office of Director of Radio, Sue Howard, so her admonitions to get the story right ring a tad hollow although much of the shallow knee-jerk reporting about the Religion Report has been annoying .

As for John Highfield's trip down memory lane, even alluding to "workplace democracy", there has been precious little of that in the ABC corridors of late. But this veteran's summing up of the tensions between values and ideology are very close to the mark. I fear we are seeing all the signs of the loss of a media and cultural treasure house. Kirsten makes the too easy assumption that most critics fear change. Well this one has advocated major change editorially and stylistically at RN for some time. It is badly needed. Real and inventive change is the key. But what we seem to be observing is just more of the same old ill-conceived and poorly informed rubbish the RN management and their superiors seem to do so well.

While most attention has focussed on the dumped Religion Report, I consider the loss of a Media Report to be as if not more damaging to the national knowledge and discussion bank. An improved one might even get the RN story right!