Theres a place for trying ro understand consumer lukes and dislikes. But a national broadcaster has a wider duty to deliver the information the nation needs to here without fear or bias. Note, I am not saying the ABC today meets that duty.

Listening too much to the preferences of the listeners introduces a bias and a circular logic to deliver more of the popular shows with those listeners because otherwise why have the data analysis if you don’t act on it. Same can be said of trying to attract non-listeners. Sometimes less is more.

People don’t often want to be challenged, but its often what they need to hear to temper their own beliefs of their correctness. Thats a key public service that is necessarily affected by reacting your audience/non-audience too well. Its like fact-checking, no one wants it, but it works.