The role of the ABC in educational radio broadcasting

In the best of all possible worlds it would have been desirable for the new department to have spent the next six to twelve months in research, policy making and then producing and testing pilot programs, especially in the adult area, but given the situation that confronted us this could not be a serious option. In order to maintain a serious claim to resources, facilities and timeslots we had to get series to air quickly. As there is an ABC Education Radio unit in every state capital this resulted in an interesting valuable diversity of program styles and philosophies, and we certainly learned a lot about our capacities and our potential audiences in the process. While we want to retain this diversity we also need to develop a policy which expresses the aims of the department as a whole and which can be related to by listeners who want to use radio as a part of a learning experience. So, as this article is going to press we are meeting in Melbourne to do just that.