In the public service, there’s a belief that being too successful sets you up for retrenchment/redundancy. It’s called sticking your neck out.

Amazingly, people still do it.

The latest case is ABC’s Radio National. RN always had great programs, but they were niche, succinct packages for very specific audiences: Religion Report, Sports Factor, Media Report and others. Excellent investigative journalism, fascinating subjects and importantly a reasonably impartial critical approach. But speaking personally, I just couldn’t work my life around the times these shows ran, and that was broadly true for the programs’ listenership. They were on a trend to increasing irrelevance.

RN radically reversed this slide with program podcasts, which now make up a significant wedge of the ABC’s 2 million podcast downloads per month. It’s been trumpeted across Australia, and internationally, as a model for public broadcasting, but last night I got word that a raft of RN’s best shows, including the above mentioned, as well as Short Story, Street Stories, In Conversation, the Ark, Perspective, had been axed.

And, get this, they’re getting rid of these shows to make room for more “consumer focussed” and “multidisciplinary” programs.

The ABC Board‘s responsible. If you’re not happy, write/phone.

c/o ABC Secretariat
GPO Box 9994
Sydney NSW 2001

(02) 8333 5312
board@your.abc.net.au

With Massive Attack’s “Collected,” we needed to find a symbol that encapsulated or conveyed the emotions and ideals of the band. With it being a “Best of,” a more obvious route would have been to utilise their trademark flame in some way. So instead we thought, a nicer way to approach the cover was to adopt a technique that we’d used before on their other album “Mezzanine:” a collage or composite of different elements, but applied to a new set of images. Working with Nick Knight, we took a still life of roses as the core element and introduced other layers over the top. When you first look at the rose, you see this very beautiful flower, or group of flowers. However on closer inspection, all these other hidden layers are revealed.

Tom Houston talking to Japan’s Ping mag about designing CD covers for Massive Attack, as well as Nick Cave, Gnarls Barkley and others.

All Tomorrow’s Parties finally in Australia.

Curated by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Featuring the Primitive Calculators, Fuck Buttons, the Necks, Laughing Clowns and the Saints, Robert Forster, the Silver Apples, Harmonia, James Blood Ulmer, M. Gira (Swans). Playing Brisbane, Sydney’s Cockatoo Island, and what looks like the pick – Mt Buller, Victoria.

If only I could go.