Last week we learnt that the ABC's landmark, experimental sound program the Listening Room was to be axed. And this evening, as I was preparing to write a letter about this, I read that New Music Australia had got the chop too...

The ABC's ADLib project was where I'd published this letter:

I was both astonished and appalled at the news that both the Listening Room and New Music Australia are to be axed.

The Listening Room gave me space and support to exert crucial ideas at a time when no one in this country was neither interested nor listening.

It provided the first experimental audio streaming project, to our knowledge, to be streamed and broadcast simultaneously in Australia, whilst in Europe this medium was already fast becoming utalitarian.

New Music Australia appeared at a time when I was near despair that radio in Australia was becoming bereft of challanges, evocations and new knowledge. Apart from numerous community broadcast efforts, the 3 B's, as Julian Knowles describes, were too often to be heard soothing the ears of the marooned.

Look ahead, not back... There's more to this country than sport and Americana.

For listening rooms everywhere,
-ag.