Local my foot

Ash Feb09 . "Your emergency services station" - a little too grand a title , I suggest . Never been happy with 774 and the ABC overplaying the "local" idea. Sure its OK most of the time but not on days like predicatable high danger days like Saturday.
Can they be the conduit for everything good that is happening? . Even when there is no emrgency we switch off . We hear people on the rdaio talkback who make sense and we can't effectively support them. We always hear lots of John and Terry, but noone ther is making the exchange go any further using postings and weblists. Lots of people switch off for example because the conduit is too narrow ( why hasn't Jon Feine got to publishing the names of agreed callers so we don't have to always rely on him as the conduit- i put that point to 774 producers over 4 years ago - He's still in control of the flow? its not right and prehistoric in the info internet age )

The B government don't understand the profession of providing risk management advice, so 774 can hardly be blamed entirely for taking on too much.
It clearly suits some presenters to think they can, like our leaders, do much much more than they really can. Time for more shared responsibility.
Really effective risk management ( the stuff we think about here every day) builds from true local responsiveness, responsibility and diversity. That way you get tough pointed and targeted decisons ( as opposed to generalised smalz)
There is nothing better than RADIO is such high risk situations, but some elements SHOULD be dedicated and the rural community should KNOW exactly where to tune to for minute by minute updates ( slow as they might be to come )

for eg there are such things as truly local community stations who dedicate all their airtime to warnings and reports in such situations and were doing it well before 774! not a mention is given to them. Its all ABC

If you warn everybody about everything all the time, you warn nobody. 774 should not be advertising itself as the fount of all knowledge. Reinforce Diversity , competence and authorship. Besides being the fount is no fun when things are really busy; you just become a big fat bottleneck and are standing in the road of diversity and shared responsibility and ....... More here