This is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission 1932-1983

Publisher's synopsis

As the bells in the tower of Sydney’s General Post Office chimed eight o’clock on the evening of Friday 1 July 1932, the peals were picked up by a microphone and carried to every State of the Federation. “This is the Australian Broadcasting Commission,” said the announcer, Conrad Charlton.

So begins K.S. Inglis’s compelling history of the first fifty years of the ABC. In a sparkling tour de force Inglis shows us the ABC’s triumphs and failures, its great medley of personalities and the effects it has had on Australian public life.

The ABC was modelled as closely as possible on the BBC, but had always to live with commercial competitors. Inglis tells the story of how government-appointed Commissioners and the staff they chose competed for the ears and – after 1956 – the eyes of Australians, trying at the same time to attract large audiences and to offer programmes that were distinctive and not merely replicas of what the commercials were doing.

Based on the Commission’s own archives, on newspapers and journals, on a rich assortment of interviews and on the author’s own listening and viewing, this is social history of the highest order.

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Ken Inglis

Ken Inglis is Emeritus Professor of History at Australian National University. His books include The Stuart Case, This is the ABC, Whose ABC? and Sacred Places, winner of The Age Book of the Year and the NSW Premier’s Prize for Australian History in 1999.

“As remarked by the historian of Australia’s national broadcaster, K.S. Inglis, a lot of history is concealed autobiography. That is certainly true of Inglis’ This is the ABC, and his excellent book is all the better for it. Inglis was contracted to write this book for the Commission’s fiftieth anniversary in 1982, with full access to staff and records, and editorial independence.

The result is a highly readable, well balanced account of the people, events, policies and pressures inside and outside this paramount organ of the Australian media.”

An ASA Council Member on why this book is in the Reading Australia First 200 list.

Further Details

Author Ken Inglis

Publisher Black Inc.

Date of Publication 1983

ISBN 9781863951814 (print)

Category Narrative History