By Christine Kearney
If you're gay, ethnic, left wing, or simply bored todeath with high rotation techno-pop, chances are you'll give commercial stations a miss and tune into public radio.
About 20% of Australians tune into public — non-profit, non-government — radio at least once a week.
In Australia the only independent source of news, views and culture on radio are the public broadcasters.
Public radio, or community access radio, is free from the political restraints of the ABC, and does not suffer the strictures of advertising which beset the commercial stations.
And according to Stafford Sanders, current affairs producer at 2SER in Sydney, "Public radio is worth its weight in gold for the different voices it offers, for the criticisms of mainstream media, and in terms of providing dissident views."
Creative and innovative, public radio is also the only real form of access radio in Australia. Only in public radio can you hear or produce programs covering issues from gay rights to Gaia, from African nationalism to Aboriginal perspectives.
But because public radio is staffed largely by volunteers and runs on small budgets, it's sometimes seen as "Mickey Mouse radio", according to Sanders. "Public radio is horribly patronised by the ABC and other media", he said.
He believes that public radio is often better than anything the ABC can produce. And at its most amateurish, "public radio is the sound of people from a whole range of different backgrounds, not necessarily those people who've been radio clones all their lives".
Most public radio isn't produced by media professionals or presented by plastic radio "personalities". This is one of its great strengths.
"In public radio, the agenda is set by the community, not by the advertisers, or the record companies", said Claire McNamara, producer at 6RTR in Perth.
For this reason, there is freedom to do what you want to do, "so long as you're not breaking a broadcasting law", said Helen Chalmers of 4ZZZ in Brisbane.