Radio National’s history revisited as ABC celebrates 90 years
18 January 2022 · News · Podcastinfo
During the ABC's 90 year history, RN has established itself as one of this country’s most significant cultural institutions.
In an article published on the ABC Alumni website this week, Sharon Ca...
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I'm not old enough to remember the Radio 2 days but I vaguely remember the RN stations were known by their original call signs in the 80s, the network consisted of a station in each major capital city and each station in the network featured significantly more local content. It seems the stations became a National network with the adoption of the Radio National name and many additional mainly FM regional transmitters were commissioned during the 1990s. My preference would be to see RN shift towards lighter, more entertaining National talk programming with less of a focus on politics than their local stations. I believe the ABC has too many AM transmitter assignments in the capital cities. The tertiary, lower powered ABC AM transmitters in the capital cities were given to the ABC by Paul Keating for the purpose of parliamentary broadcasting and the Newsradio service was established as a low cost placeholder for the parliamentary broadcasting frequencies whilst Parliament was not in session. Perhaps the Newsradio frequencies which now include many regional FM transmitters could be converted to FM and be used to launch Double J as a major ABC radio service. Parliamentary proceedings can be streamed on line these days for anyone interested in listening.