I have been overseas for three years. I came back to watch a station I once found innovative and progressive. Instead, I found that they had wound the clocks back 20 years since my departure. There is now strong use of English National voice overs, programing largely only sourced from the BBC and cringe worthy specials that deal with 'old world' notions of class and station (Alex Downer is on the box as we speak with some vicar bleeting about SA being a upper class Anglophile utopia). Were is the high level of local content? Why are programs not being sourced from countries other than England and stations other than the BBC? Why are voice overs not being presented in accents that reflect what Australia really is, a vibrant multicultural polyglot? Why are English nationals (or English born) being entrusted with current affairs interviews with those in power? Bring back the station I used to like. The way it is now, I may as well tune into BBC World, or start watching repeats of the Mavis Branson Show.

-- Anonymous, November 18, 2002

Answers

The deplorable state of ABC funding has a lot to do with it. But don't abandon the ABC just yet. The Friends are fighting hard to raise public awareness in relation to the fact that the ABC's difficulties have not ceased with the change in Managing Director. The effects of depleted base funding are bound to show up somewhere and you have drawn attention to its most obvious symptoms.

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2002

What a load of fatuouse crap the ABC sounds nothing like the bbc and no other national television station would be so stupid to put people on air who cant pronounce the first language corectly. Imagine onother country putting a reader on air who had english as first language and spoke the native language with a bad accent. Jules is a politically correct idiot.

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2002

ABC is too anglophile? You are talking about the ABC that is a state- owned national broadcasting network of Australia; that happens to have only one national language, that being English? I think you MEAN to say that you are sick of seeing us whiteys that had the temerity to allow your sad ass in in the first place. And keep your backward, stone-age cultures. If you want wog-versity, tune into the SBS (Service Broadcasting nothing but wog Shit.)

-- Anonymous, April 04, 2003

Ever heard of SBS?

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2003