On 20 December 1939, just after the start of World War II, Robert Menzies launched Radio Australia with the words: “The time has come to speak for ourselves”.
Today, its international audiences are in the millions and in the regions and countries of great geostrategic importance to Australia.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) International today operates on a budget of $11 million per year, estimated to be less than a third of pre-2014 levels. It has a staff of 38 who work mainly in media development programs for the Pacific region, and sometimes parts of Asia, and a small number who manage and administer its various international broadcast channels (radio and TV) as well as wide-ranging digital content activity.
ABC International management and staff have been committed to Australia relevant in the Asia-Pacific region, but its present resources are not enough to reach a potential audience of more than three billion people. It has the capacity to do more to reach audiences in the Indo Pacific region and needs more funding and support for needed expansion.
ABC Radio has FM service in 13 of the most populous locations across the Pacific and in Timor Leste with a monthly listenership of at least 407,000.
It has syndicated in-language (Tok Pisin/Solomons Pidgin/Bislama) news and current affairs program Wantok to Radio New Zealand (RNZ) on their shortwave service which is heard in the remotest locations across the Pacific.
It also shares Wantok and our other daily news and current affairs program Pacific Beat with partners such as PNG’s NBC provincial services while also making the case to Government to expand Radio Australia’s FM footprint.
Alongside this, its International Development team works with local media and broadcasters to build and strengthen their own transmission capacity, to take homegrown media and stories to populations in remote and urban regions.
It has also commissioned the ground-breaking Pacific women’s issues program Sistas Let’s Talk, education content for pre-school and early primary students in Pacific Playtime and a Pacific focussed music show Island Music.
It recently got some funding to create a new Pacific focussed sports program for ABC Radio Australia (Can You Be More Pacific). It builds on our existing bespoke programming for our Pacific radio audiences which includes comprehensive coverage of Pacific news and current affairs (delivered in English and through the in-language Wantok program) produced by ABC’s dedicated, specialist Pacific team in the Asia Pacific Newsroom in Melbourne.
This story first appeared on RadioInfo.asia