MN.16.12.1999 Sydney Pacific Safari

This is the second of three programmes Jonathan Marks made in the Pacific. It follows on from the previous week's edition made in Auckland New Zealand. Jonathan was sent to represent Radio Netherlands at a meeting of the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union at a very expensive hotel in Sydney. But he escaped some of the rather dry "working groups" to explore some of the stations, including the SBS and ABC. It didn't seem sensible to travel so far from Europe just to sit in a hotel room. Mike Bird, (pictured) our propagation man in Melbourne took the one hour flight to Sydney and we walked around the harbour recalling how media was changing at the start of a new century. I see the SBS broadcasts in Dutch - I would have thought the audience had really dwindled away to nothing by now.