The Middle Years of Radio 4EB: Acting Locally, Thinking Nationally

Abstract

Ethnic public radio station 4EB started life as a local political response to an urgent social problem: giving migrant communities minimal recognition of their heartland biographies — nearly 20 years late for some of them. Within five years, the station's enigmatic but steely president. Tony Manicaros, had taken the same project into the national arena. Tony and the station which had enabled his conviction of the importance of ethnic radio to Australian national identity, and therefore federal government policy, dominated the important middle years of the station, with Tony becoming an important lobbyist and instigator of reforms in federal communications policy.