Much outcry as Australian broadcaster kills popular radio book show
3 October 2011

  

The Australian national broadcaster has long been a beacon in the literary world for its daily Book Show, hosted by the extraordinary presenter Ramona Koval.

ABC Radio National has now announced plans to replace the hour-long daily show focused on books alone to a mixed arts/culture/books format, which will reduce the time devoted to writers and writing.

The outcry down under has been vociferous ever since star novelist Christos Tsiolkas (author of the highly successful 2008 novel The Slap) protested on Crikey of his “strong dismay” at this “dumbing-down."

Tsiolkas's intervention, via an open letter to the ABC board on Sept. 20, was timed for maximum effect, the Australian reports, as ABC1 is promoting the Oct. 6 premiere of a television adaptation of his award-winning novel, which has sold 800,000 copies worldwide.

Koval has indicated that she is considering her options, and listeners from across the country have been deluging ABC, other media, and Koval herself with messages of appreciation and protest.

We here in Canada are all too familiar with assaults on cultural programming from our own national broadcaster. This probably isn’t the time to complain about the CBC, with the broadcaster in the government’s sights for funding cuts, and I am the last person to complain about the tremendous role the CBC is playing in promoting Canadian music and musicians.

Radio is good at music, certainly, but music isn’t the only thing radio is good at. So I will take this opportunity to point to the spectacular example that Australia’s Book Show has set in books coverage on radio – and to lament that fact that we don’t have anything that comes even close to daily books coverage here in Canada.

Linda Leith

© Linda Leith 2011

.ll.

 

[This post appeared on the Globe Books blog In Other Words on Monday, October 3rd, 2011.]

 


More Articles

The Lion in Winter: Gore Vidal

When Raboy passed the torch to the audience, a young woman went up to the microphone to ask Vidal, “What is the most important thing in life for you?”

Vidal thought for a moment before saying a single word, “Anaesthetic.” 

Anaesthetic there had been and anaesthetic there would be.

From far away, from right here

It used to be that you could get better Hungarian sausages in Montreal than you could in Budapest. So many of the Hungarians have left, taking with them their flourless cakes and their cafés, so I’m not sure that’s still true, but others have arrived to take their place. Ingredients are now available here to make dishes from across the globe, and there are now Iranian, Russian, Georgian, Polish, Italian, Tamil, Vietnamese, Peruvian, Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Lebanese, and Ethiopian restaurants all within walking distance.

From Yan Liang: Ai Weiwei's Disappearance

After 60 years of absolute power, the Chinese Communist Party is more fragile than the world thinks – and has trouble dealing with any criticism or challenge, especially from its own people.

 

8-Logos-bottom