Every Friday morning Cairns Mayor Val Schier spends an hour on air at 4CA to chat with the good burghers within transmitter reach of the studios. “Listeners ring up and ask why their garbage bin is not being emptied and things like that,” says station manager, Steve Hirst. With Cash for Comment boldly set on its front page, The Cairns Post has accused the station of taking money for the Mayor’s hour without disclosing it as a paid advertisement. Hirst flatly denies any connection between the program and her Council’s substantial ad spend on 4CA. Yet the station’s morning host, John McKenzie seemed to connect the dots when he told his listeners that if the “Council had decided to move all its advertising spend across to another commercial radio station, we would not have continued to extend the gesture of the hour for the Mayor. I can assure you that that would not have happened.”

For many years FARB, the forerunner of CRA, unhappy with the meager slice Radio was being dealt from the federal government’s advertising pie, considered the idea of banning politicians from the airways until Radio got a more generous cut. While politicians were scrambling to be heard on this powerful medium that could help them get elected, the ad agency was telling them to spend their department’s dollars on TV.

Why then should commercial radio give pollies a free kick and get nothing in return?

In the end, common sense prevailed and separation of church and state restored. Just as music stations need the record industry, talk stations need politicians, otherwise they’d have a lot less to talk about.

But using politicians for entertainment usually involves some tough questions and pointing to their deficiencies. By all accounts Mayor Schier’s hour was left largely for her to present Council’s position on issues without redress from McKenzie, a seasoned talk presenter of 25 years standing.

If the Mayor’s hour stands on its own merits – draws listeners and maintains full advertising logs – then why would the station dump it if the Council decides to drop its advertising?

And if it isn’t a great radio in its own right, why does it stay on air? Or am I being naïve in a commercial world?

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