Aunty - the media phenomenon of Australia

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We have in Australia a media outlet which, apart from Britain’s BBC on which it was based, is almost unique. It was originally founded in 1932 (and was dubbed Aunty, for some strange reason), and was owned and funded by the government but was always designed to be editorially independent. In 2004 a major opinion pollster (Morgan’s) found that among media professionals it was considered to be the most accurate news source in the country. The calibre of its journalists and presenters is high. Several (19 in fact) have entered parliament, 10 for the left wing Labour Party and 9 for the conservative Liberal/National Party coalition, which tends to contradict the often stated opinion that it is left biased. Originally it was purely a radio format, and was the staple diet for most of Australia’s rural population for half a century, but it has developed enormously since then, particularly over the past 20 years. It now operates 54 local radio stations, 4 national networks, and the international Radio Australia, which broadcasts mainly in South East Asia. There is also an ABC TV channel devoted to the same region. Both broadcast in a mixture of English and local Asian languages. There is also a short-wave service which covers the same region plus the Pacific Islands. One of its most popular aspects is the youth oriented Triple J FM Its current rural network, ABC Radio National, runs over 60 special interest programs, such as music, comedy, book readings, radio dramas, poetry, science, health, the arts, religion, social history and current affairs, and is the staple diet in the morning in this household. The ABC News Radio produces much of its own material, but also broadcasts items from the BBC, NPR, Deutsche Welle, Radio Netherlands, and CNN Radio. It runs a classical music network as well, and as part of that service it funds and promotes the six state Symphony Orchestras. It also runs the most interesting and informative television networks in the nation (with the possible exception of the ethnic network SBS), with a high proportion of news and current affairs programs plus a wide variety of both local and overseas produced drama and comedy, very little of which is from the commercial entertainment mills of the USA. Thank the Gods. There are four TV networks, each concentrating on a different area of interest, such as a digital version of the main network, a children’s channel, and a dedicated news and current affairs channel. The entire body of work can be accessed online at abc.net.au, and if you can access that through the net it would be well worth your while to have a look (check out the TV show Q&A for example). As a couple of members here found when they googled a subject I had raised, the standard of the programming is extremely high. It is often accused of left-wing bias, but several Labour leaders have accused it of the exact opposite: it is truly neutral, as any objective observer will attest. A recent innovation is the ABC shop, which markets books, music, and DVDs of programs shown or broadcast by the corporation. British readers of this post will recognise a lot of similarities with the BBC network in Britain, but I imagine that most others will be quite unfamiliar with this kind of media outlet. It has NO commercial sponsorship whatsoever, and thus there is no vested interest to be dealt with. It presents, overall, a highly accurate, informative, in depth, and neutral assessment of local and world news and issues. Sorry, this is another long post, but I hope one that gives a further insight into aspects of Australia (I luv ya) and one that is, I hope, interesting. Lash