If I’d been handed a book for the recent GfK Radio 360 Survey 5 it would have looked very strange indeed. ABC Classic would have featured strongly, alongside liberal doses of RSN and contemporary commercial stations. I’ve been staying with my parents ahead of my mother’s upcoming knee operations and consuming vicariously their listening habits. One Saturday Mum and Dad returned from coffee and Dad fairly bolted from the car to catch the Group 1 Stow Memsie Stakes. Mum roused at him for abandoning her for the horses.

This was my childhood personified. Until I got my own car I consumed 2MBS and ABC Classic everywhere I went with my mother. Saturdays, Dad took the transistor radio with him as he did chores to listen to 2KY (now Sky Sports Radio). Then, from 4-5pm, no one was allowed to speak to mum during John Cargher‘s long running Singers of Renown on ABC Radio National. These are such happy memories. Both so different to the type of radio presenter I became, but formative for their understanding and respect for their audience.

ABC Classic still allows a piece of music to sit a moment after it finishes before any back or forward announcement. This is so counterintuitive to commercial radio where every gap must be filled, with songs overlapped by ID and announcers priding themselves on hitting the post, that is the first words of the song after the intro. Your content manager would be banging on the window if you decided to let a song leisurely fade out to nothing to truly appreciate the efforts of the engineers and production. In many classic pieces there are no vocals to hit the post of, and so they only start it after they have finished speaking.

Since I started working for Radioinfo I’ve been taking a personal survey of Uber driver’s listening habits. I think it would make an excellent research project and surely someone is going to create a DAB+ station soon called Uber Drive (patent pending). I’ve been introduced to new songs like Stick Season by Noah Kahan in Melbourne (Nova 100) and just last week, When You’re Lonely by Hoang and Tasji. That driver was playing a Spotify mix, complete with AI DJ loudly while trying to chat at the same time. When I used my phone to find out the name of the Hoang song he turned the music up louder still.

Just once, around midnight in Adelaide while I was there for the CBAA Conference in 2023, has an Uber driver been playing classical music radio. I commented and he immediately asked if I wanted to change the station, or turn it off. No, I said, it’s perfect. He said that driving late at night it seemed to relax both him and his passengers. I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me. He was right.

Just like how non sports fans zone out during that part of the news bulletin, I’d suggest that while surfing the dial non classical music fans wouldn’t think to pause and check out the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performing Bach‘s Air on a G String. Unless they heard the name and thought it sounded peculiar. Or perhaps if it was on kazoo…..

ABC Classic is one of two truly national music stations in Australia, alongside triple j. Wherever you are you can likely find it somewhere on the regular dial and if that fails by DAB+, online or even listen on TV. It is especially popular in Canberra, where I mostly reside. Last year it surveyed an 11.2% audience share. Around that time, as if to prove a point, I was teaching a group of teenagers voiceover skills. I asked what they listened to and one young man said always ABC Classic. When his colleagues scoffed he was unfazed. You should try it too, he said, it plays the best music. I love Chopin.

Not Taylor Swift. Chopin.

Before ABC Conversations, or Take Five with Zan Rowe, Margaret Throsby would spend an hour with a guest on ABC Classic mornings and ask them to select their favourite classical pieces. Margaret worked at the ABC for 55 years and I mean she interviewed everyone from Prime Ministers to sports people, doctors to Jane Fonda. Because of my mother I’ve heard an inordinate number of these interviews where Margaret elicited the most remarkable answers, because I think classical music, at pivotal points in your life, hits differently.

In August 2005 I was with my parents as we prepared the funeral for my brother who had died unexpectedly. Mum needed something for the pool and I asked to go with her for the drive. I have only realised today that she probably was looking forward to some alone time with Margaret Throsby. I can’t recall who the guest was as my head was elsewhere. We arrived, I decided to stay in the car and mum asked if I wanted the radio off or on?

On.

The guest spoke about a similar loss in their life and Margaret began their selected piece of music. I didn’t know it but as I listened I felt it somehow told the story of my own brother’s journey from a body on this earth to a realm I was no longer to be part of.

It is called, as I discovered after some 15 minutes, The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams. 

Imagine commercial radio allowing 15 minutes for a piece of music of this magnitude? That day classical music spoke to me and we have been in conversation ever since.

It tends not to get a look in on metro survey day but ABC Classic was up, or at least steady, in all but Melbourne Survey 5. And building in the 40-54 age bracket. People like myself who need an oasis of calm in an otherwise busy world. Most of us who work in the media pride ourselves on knowing a little bit on many things and being open to most others. If you’ve never paused on ABC Classic, the MBS stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane or ArtSound FM Canberra, give it a go next time you are looking for something different.

You might find that it speaks a language you understand too.

Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo.