For ever and ever and ever, amen

Who does the ABC programming these days? The Archbishop of Canterbury? Here's the page called Wednesday Schedule for Radio National.

5:00am Asia Pacific
with Linda LoPresti. Comprehensive daily coverage of Asian and Pacific affairs
5:30am Comedy - My Music
Wake up to a laugh from the BBC
6:00am Breakfast
with Fran Kelly. Includes Radio National's AM at 7.10am.
8:30am Religion Report
with Stephen Crittenden. The burning issues confronting today's religions Repeat b'cast 8pm. This week...
9:00am Life Matters
with Kate Evans. Personal and social issues
10:45am First Person
Serialised reading of published autobiographies
11:00am Bush Telegraph
with Michael Mackenzie. People, places and issues from rural and regional Australia
12:00pm News and The World Today
with Eleanor Hall. News and analysis from Australia and the world
1:00pm RadioEye
with Brent Clough. Radio Eye presents the best in documentaries and features from Australia and around the world.
2:00pm Book Reading
Fiction adapted for radio. Repeat b'cast 11pm.
2:20pm The Deep End
with Sian Prior. New music, interviews and ideas in the arts
4:00pm Late Night Live
with Norman Swan. Topical, political, cultural and philosophical issues
5:00pm News and PM
with Mark Colvin. Review of national and international current affairs
5:55pm Perspective
Expert commentary by opinion-makers
6:00pm Australia Talks Back
with Sandy McCutcheon. Australia's only nation-wide radio talkback program. To participate, call toll free on 1300 22 55 76
7:00pm Encounter
Documentary exploring religion and life
8:00pm Religion Report
with Stephen Crittenden. The burning issues confronting today's religions
8:35pm The Ark
with Rachael Kohn. Curious tales from religious history
8:50pm The Rhythm Divine
with Geoff Wood. World sacred music, everything from chant to the charts
9:00pm All In The Mind
with Julie Browning. From amnesia to artificial intelligence
9:35pm The Philosopher's Zone
with Alan Saunders. Big philosophical questions
9:45pm Ockham's Razor
with Robyn Williams. Science commentary.
10:00pm Late Night Live
with Norman Swan. Topical, political, cultural and philosophical issues Repeat b'cast 4pm next day (6pm in WA).
11:00pm Book Reading
Fiction adapted for radio
11:20pm The Planet
with Lucky Oceans. Richly varied music from around the world. Playlists available...
1:00am Asia Pacific
with Linda LoPresti. Comprehensive daily coverage of Asian and Pacific affairs
1:30am Religion Report
with Stephen Crittenden. The burning issues confronting today's religions
2:00am Verbatim
Oral history
2:30am Street Stories
Untold stories from the hidden corners of Australia
3:00am Australia Talks Back
with Sandy McCutcheon. Australia's only nation-wide radio talkback program
4:00am Encounter
Exploring religion and life

Tagged: abc, radio+national, religion, christianity, radio

Spellbinding by any criterion

Another one of those inexplicable and kinda irritating Radio National presenter things is the use of the word 'criteria' as a singular noun. What is most inexplicable is how anyone can get through primary school or the early years of high school and not know the word 'criterion' and its plural. I heard a presenter get it wrong a couple of days ago, and Fran Kelly got it wrong this morning on the Breakfast cum Sports Show: "what is the criteria?" It is well beyond time for Auntie to have English training sessions for presenters and writers, or -- better still -- not to employ people who can't use the language well.

A bouquet, however, to that program for an excellent interview with two men who were involved with the execution of the last person to be hanged in Australia, Ronald Ryan. It was spellbinding by any criterion. A bouquet, too, to Auntie for its coverage of the Van Nguyen execution story over the past week or two. I am grateful that they have not let the matter 'drop' as this boy will drop in Singapore next Friday.

Tagged: scose, abc, australia, australian, english, language, radio, grammar, spelling, pronunciation, journalism, radio+national

A 'prodject' to implement: Our own culture

Creeping Americanization: When was the last time you heard an ABC Radio National presenter not pronounce 'project' the American way? One feels that they feel they derive some increased authority by jettisoning Australian culture, bit by bit, and adopting American pronunciations. Perhaps it doesn't matter, but there must still be some Australians who respect their own traditions and culture. And I'm sure there are many who don't want 'fries' with their 'to go' meals at the 'store' near the 'train station'. Come on, Auntie! Let's send 'prodject' back to the US of A, along with all the other American pronunciations and idioms that your presenters are adopting at an alarming rate.

Categories: scose, abc, australia, australian, english, language, radio, grammar, spelling, pronunciation

All the latest corporate analysis from ABC

Did you know, Ms Geraldine Doogue asks us (Saturday Breakfast, today), that sometimes in movies and TV shows there are products placed for advertising purposes and that this is a commercial phenomenon known as 'product placement?

Well, jeez, no, we didn't know that! What's the world coming to? Next you'll be telling us Berlin Wall's come down and John Lennon's dead.

I just don't know how the advertising industry can get away with things like this in the 20th century.

Product placement? Is that anything like corporations placing products (and people praising products) in real life, such as in crowds and office buildings? Now that's a story.

Tagged: product+placement, advertising, media, hollywood, abc, australia

I'm paralyzated

Note to The World Today: I'm all for innovations in language, but God I hope your "paralyzation" will not nudge "paralysis" out of the OED in my lifetime.

I have been to the mountain-top

I had a dream.

In my dream, all the ABC presenters, convicted that they are part of one human species and that national borders are a dangerous anachronism, got together in a big ABC conference room and, after their watercress and cucumber sandwiches, wrote a charter.

In this charter, which they signed with in their own blood (or it might have been a classy hermitage), they vowed that they would challenge any guest, interviewee or fellow sinecurist who uttered words worthy of 19th-century nationalism. They pledged that jingoism would henceforth be treated on the ABC as an excrescence, a political incorrectness as heinous as racism, sexism or shouting "tossers" through the ventilators of the ABC headquarters.

Thus, in my dream, the presenters challenged and corrected, and collectively embarrassed and humiliated, each and every person who said things like "We did very well to thrash the Nova Scotians in that 43-Man Squamish game", "Australia needs to innovate to compete with China's output of plastic Christmas tree baubles", or "Thankfully, only one Australian was injured in the inundation of Atlantis".

Then I woke up.

Three syllables good, four syllables hard

With the presenter of The Religion Report and a Christian guest having a discussion in which they both use the adjective 'evangelical' where 'evangelistic' is meant, and where 'evangelical' Christians are patronised by both parties, it makes for a spellbinding program on inter-faith dialogue. I could fairly hear, rising across the land, the hackles of veritable hosts of evangelical and evangelistic Christians. Thank God, I am neither.

Where's that chalk?

The Law Report on Radio National is very good, but when you hear someone referred to as "a champion athlete and father", don't you have flashbacks to a primary school teacher hurling in your general direction a piece of chalk and the perceptive words, "Oh, he was a champion father, was he?" The ABC needs some chalk throwers, or at least some primary school teachers.