Bananas in Pyjamas (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas) On where to start rebuilding the ABC: Peter Blackwell writes: I enjoy Guy Rundle’s columns and appreciate the challenges he frequently dispenses, but I can make neither head nor tail of his potpourri of ideas to “improve” Radio National. I have been devoted to RN for longer than Phillip Adams ran Late Night Live . I have despaired of the pairing of “radical” content from Offspring and then Life Matters , to become a relatively insipid self-help and talk-fest program.
Great programs like Asia Pacific have vanished, as RN was told by an increasingly conservative board to serve a lower common denominator audience and cease to challenge the nation. Anderson’s exit can be a reset at the ABC. It must start with Radio National Read More Nevertheless, I have learned so much more from listening to RN than I ever did at university.
My life is entirely designed around ensuring that I get to hear all my preferred RN programs when they go to air (i.e. on the radio) despite the fact that I work 50 hours a week! I share lots of the best bits by forwarding the website links with people unlikely to have otherwise heard them.
There is definitely room to improve RN, but it does not help to put more politicians on Breakfast and PM . We want to hear frank and constructive debate of the issues from people who know what they are talking about — happy to hear all sides, but keep a sense of proportion. Politicians are only worth hearing if ser.