Yesterday the Government clawed back its commitment for local radio programming in the bush, from a mighty four and half hours to three hours. Wow, what a brave decision by the Communications Minister.

Admittedly the extra hour and a half was really to cover local news and current affairs, and the Nationals were the only ones really pushing for that, but they can go to hell … or to their friendly local ABC station to carry their political campaign messages from now on.

And while there might be no local “news” there will be chance to buy ads, honourable local member. See the beauty of this arrangement is you can pump in network programming, and then switch to local advertising. But please don’t think the regional radio industry has it easy. Just because they can afford a local sales force, doesn’t mean they can afford actual people to go to air.

The submitted reports look like a farmer’s application for help during a drought. And when they can barely promise three hours of local programming a day, it’s time to jump off the sinking radio boat and find a new medium, as this industry is looking very sick and the El Niño of radio sees no end.

What with the pressure to come up with three entire hours of local programming Monday to Friday being so painful, things are looking very grim indeed in the cheapest of all media, where 90% of your content is provided almost free by the music industry.

The only respite for these poor license holders, are the now provisioned six weeks a year where they don’t have to make local programming at all, because their local presenters need a holiday. See business is so bad; they can’t even afford to cover annual leave. One wonders if the government should start corporate tax subsidies for these poor old regional radio stations.

Let’s salute the sole owners, or the small networks in regional Australia who actually produce almost 24 hours of programming locally everyday, these brave licence holders, mainly unlisted companies, are obviously foolish when their bigger network stocklisted partners can’t make a decent buck doing it, they must surely one day have to amalgamate and become part of one of the super networks, or go broke serving their local communities.

And, Minister, thanks for not putting any burdens on the big metro networks, as commercial radio in the city is also so unprofitable now that even metro stations are forced into the embarrassing situation of “hubbing” programming into their smaller metro markets, including news. Brisbane, your news is coming from Sydney on the most profitable network right now. And Adelaide, almost an entire radio station in your market is coming from Sydney.

It’s a race to the bottom of the programming barrel, which one of you, DMG, ARN, Austereo or Southern Cross is brave enough to cut and slice the quickest, to survive in this harsh media environment. Radio has always been a mirror of the community it serves, and this outsourcing is just a reflection of the wider corporate community, isn’t it? I mean if they could, I’m sure the networks would make their programming in India or China, but of course this is silly, so radio’s solution is not to make any programming at all.

Oh, I remember the days, when owning a commercial radio station was a licence to print money, oh they were the days. I believe it was last financial year.