Matt Abraham says he will never live it down.
He was new at ABC Radio and was doing a pre-recording session in one of the studios at Northbourne Avenue. His daughter was there, too. Suddenly people starting appearing at the studios window, waving their arms about and pointing at various buttons on the console.
Abraham or his daughter had pressed some wrong buttons and he was being broadcast on Radio National Australia wide, telling his daughter not to touch those buttons and to play quietly.
As it happens, he need not have worried much 2CN far out-rates Radio national, so his audience wasn’t listened.
Yesterday, Abraham announced he was leaving Canberra and the key opinion-leading and -forming weekday morning show on ABC Radio 2CN.
Unlike commercial electronic media changes, there was no personality clashes, ratings fall-outs or huge contractual lures from elsewhere.
It was more prosaic than that: a combination of personal, professional and geographic reasons: facing another Canberra winter getting up at 5am in the dark with frost on the windscreen; a good job offer as chief political reporter with ABC television in Adelaide; returning to Adelaide where he was born and where his parents and wife’s parents live (“”the grandparent/baby-sitter factor”).
Abraham arrived in Canberra seven years ago, did two years a chief political correspondent for the Adelaide Advertiser, took the 10-noon 2CN shift for nearly two years and then moved into the city’s key radio spot three years ago.
“”Getting up a 5am when you have a young family (three children aged four to 14) takes its toll,” he said. “”I’m not a morning person; I’ve usually worked evening shifts. I have to prepared the night before because I go into automaton mode in the early morning. I put out the Weet-Bix and spoon and lay out my clothes, socks and tie the night before. And when I get up I go into remote control.”
He first went on air in Canberra’s “”Sun-Ripened-Warm-Tomato” period just after the first self-government election.
“”I, and my producer Hugh Crawford, decided to take it seriously, though, as a government that affected people, rather than hoping a fairy god-mother would wave a magic wand and take it all away,” he said.
All the media in Canberra had done a lot to make the self-government process mature and to make the MLAs more accountable.
Abraham is worried, however, that some “”fruit loops” might get elected under the new Hare-Clark system and make the Assembly more unstable.
He is also concerned about the city’s planning direction.
“”The quality of a lot of urban in-fill is dreadful,” he said. “”And Canberra will be stuck with it. Is it necessary or is it a fad? If we are going to do it we should do it properly with some style. At present we have a town-planning version of cramming a Mini Minor with as many university students as possible.
“Canberra was so good at planning. Now we’ve dropped the ball.”
He sees some irony in Canberra having for so long been accused as being a city without soul that as soon as it gets some old suburbs with character and style someone wants to wreck them.
He thought, however, that North Watson, if done well would be good for the city. At present it was a big block of nothing.
Television would be “”a buzz” and he says with a self-deprecating grin, “”I should get a multi-skilling award from Laurie Brereton.”
But it “”will be difficult to walk away from my obsession and my life and a city which has been very good to me and my family for seven years”.
His replacement is not likely to be announced until after the new station manager, Michael Mason, arrives on April 26.