Ian ‘Macca’ McNamara’s All Over Australia program pulled from ABC radio’s international service

The ABC has quietly pulled its most popular weekend radio show, Australia All Over with Ian ‘Macca’ McNamara, from its international broadcasting service.

The ABC has quietly pulled its most popular weekend radio show, Australia All Over with Ian ‘Macca’ McNamara, from its international broadcasting service.

While the much-loved and long-running Sunday morning program will continue to air on ABC Local Radio stations across the country, it has been dumped from Radio Australia — an international service which broadcasts across the Pacific.

McNamara has been the permanent host of Australia All Over since 1985, and is particularly popular with Australian expats in the Pacific region.

The show has a rural focus, with listeners encouraged to call McNamara to discuss their every day experiences in the bush, the regions, or in expat communities.

It’s understood that ABC staff attached to the show weren’t informed of the decision to remove Australia All Over from the Radio Australia schedule until they were contacted earlier this month by expat listeners who were curious as to why Radio National broadcasts were airing on Sunday mornings instead of McNamara’s program. Last week, a senior ABC manger told the program’s staff the broadcaster had “decided to go in another direction” and wanted to put more emphasis on “celebrating Pacific voices”.

“We’ve relied so heavily for so long on content made in Australia for Australian audiences,” read the email, obtained by The Australian.

Autralia All Over host Ian McNamara with Dawn Fraser. Picture: Darryn Smith

Staff were told the ABC was looking to “increase the amount of bespoke Pacific content on the network”.

“While expat audiences are still important, the core people we (Radio Australia) are making content for is Pacific audiences.”

The decision to remove the popular program from the Radio Australia network has stunned some ABC insiders, with one veteran figure at the broadcaster telling this masthead: “Macca’s show is the most effective soft diplomacy that Australia has ever had in the Pacific region.

“Radio Australia is about projecting Australia to the world, and I can’t think of any better way of doing that than through Australia All Over. If the ABC wants to put customised services into the Pacific for Pacific audiences, there are dozens of other timeslots that would have been more appropriate.

“It doesn’t make sense. It smacks of a decision that was made in middle or lower levels of management … but now senior management is stuck with having to deal with this embarrassing situation.”

It’s understood that ABC managing director David Anderson has been made aware of the decision to remove Australia All Over from the Radio Australia line-up.

The decision to update the schedule comes amid the ABC’s stated shift to become a “digital-majority” media outlet, in its quest to engage a younger audience.

Another ABC insider, who asked not to be named, said the once-a-week show was an integral part of the media organisation’s overall line-up, because it reached a demographic — namely, a lower socio-economic bracket — that “we don’t always speak to”.

A spokesman for the ABC said: “The ABC Radio Australia schedule has been updated to provide region specific programs to audiences in the Pacific.

“RA audiences across the Pacific are generally a younger demographic and our new content aims to appeal to that younger cohort, as well as meeting the news, entertainment and information needs of all ages.”

McNamara declined to comment.