Saturday AM name change

ABC Radio’s Saturday current affairs program will change its name to This Week.

Previously known as Saturday AM, the show has evolved to be a little different from the weekday current affairs programs AM, World Today and PM. It plays extended interviews that retrospectively analyse two or three major stories from the week.

Host Linda Mottram, who presents PM each weeknight, also hosts the Saturday program and does many of the extended interviews herself. There are more long-form interviews in the show than reports, although when news is breaking the program still mobilises to cover it.

Mottram has the experience for the extended format, having reported throughout Australia and internationally as a foreign correspondent, as well as presenting the morning show on ABC Sydney. Her experience also includes working in newspapers and commercial radio, as well as covering politics in Canberra.

The new show recognises the different format that has evolved in the Saturday program, which Mottram now presents from Bega on the NSW south coast.

During more than 25 years as a journalist, Mottram has travelled with Australian Prime Ministers, covered peace and war, reported on assassinations and elections, and created radio on issues as diverse as Crusader archaeology, the modern Liberal party, Afghan women’s art and sheep dog trials.

She has worked in many of the world’s hotspots for the ABC, including the Middle East and the Balkans, striving to explain stories through the eyes of those least able to influence their fate. She’s a Walkley Award winner, taking out the Radio Current Affairs category award in 1999 for her coverage of the Meja massacre during the conflict in Kosovo.

Originally from Perth, Mottram began as a graduate cadet at West Australian Newspapers then joined the ABC. She later moved to Canberra for a commercial radio station for the Daily Telegraph, then back to the ABC. Her two foreign postings for the ABC in the Middle East and Moscow also saw Linda contributing analysis to broadcasters in Europe and Canada.

 
   


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