This article from the April 2012 edition of the IPA Review is by Research at the IPA, Peter Gregory.
If you’ve been reading your Hey… What did I miss? (and if you haven’t, we’re very sad) you’ll know that 13 February was UNESCO World Radio Day.
As you are no doubt aware, this is the day meant to ‘encourage decision-makers to create and provide access to information through radio’. The folks down at UNESCO must have been listening to Roskam, Wilson, Berg, Novak, Moran, Paterson and Lloyd in action! (They’ve obviously never heard of Kyle Sandilands…).
And in case you were at a loss on how to celebrate this momentous occasion, the United Nations has helpfully provided us with 15 suggestions on how best to celebrate World Radio Day. One of the most perplexing was, ‘diffuse our collection of sound bites on famous UNESCO moments’. This is a great idea in theory, but trying to select just one ‘famous UNESCO moment’ would surely cause too many arguments!
Suggestion number three urged punters to, ‘organise a small radio/television debate/ discussion involving stakeholders (broadcasters, policy-makers, academics, legal fraternity) on the relevance of radio in citizens’ lives.’ Nothing says ‘party’ like a discussion about radio with a bunch of lawyers. But if were UNESCO, I wouldn’t be mentioning the word ‘relevance’…
Indeed, the notion of having ‘days’ to honour fairly hum-drum activities is becoming a bit of a fad. And there’s a massive glut of important dates around the start of the year. I’m not talking about Christmas, Boxing Day or New Year’s Eve, but National Personal Trainer Day (January 2), World Hypnotism Day (January 4) and National Tempura Day (January 7).
Yep, it seems like everything has a day these…um…days. And it’s easy to get carried away in the excitement and celebrations. But the most important thing to remember is this: tempura is not just for a day, it’s for life.
