Loving and unncessarily snarky 1990s reviews
In this episode we deep dive into the 2SER’s paper archives, particularly our old newspaper and media files. Lots of media outlets used to keep these types of things -reviews, mentions, features – and this group of lovely yellowed pages can tell us a lot about 2SER over time. This particular piece is a review from the Sydney Morning Herald from 1993 where reviewer Richard Ackland lovingly, if not unnecessarily snark-ily, bemoans how far 2SER had come since its beginnings. Noting that we had “improved our performance considerably”, the review also praises the alternative take on the Sydney community that 2SER provides, including the “HSC Any Questions” segment that helped students in the trenches of their final slog toward the High School finish line.
This piece is important because it shows how we gained the attention of the mainstream media despite being perhaps a bit ‘scruffy’ at times. Remember, 1993 was pre-internet so to have a big feature in the Sydney Morning Herald was the type of thing that our big cousins over at Grown Up Commercial Radio would have been very jealous of! It’s a fascinating read.
By the way – if you were one of those students who used “HSC Any Questions” we’d love to hear from you! You’ll also be pleased to know that some of those segments are already available to the public, held at the NSW State Library here and here.
