Out with 2020 – in with 2021
As we all bid adieu to 2020 (and good riddance perhaps) we were proud to continue broadcasting Travel Writers Radio on FM radio in Melbourne, except for a few weeks where COVID-1`9 regulations prevented us using the station’s facilities. But we quickly pivoted our production and upped our quality to broadcast in HD audio from our homes using a special PC application.
So we were able to ensure our team remained isolated and socially distanced as required during what was apparently the world’s harshest pandemic lockdown of 112 days. At the height of our pandemic Melbourne, a city of five million residents, had more than 770 daily infections and about 900 deaths.
So we put about 45 two-hour episodes of Travel Writers Radio to air during 2020, covering some of the disasters 2020 wrought on our wide brown land – drought, devastating firestorms, then COVID – with reporting from local PALAT members as well as those in other states and internationally-based.
This 90 hours of radio comprised six stories on average each week. Those 270 stories – almost all are archived on our SoundCloud site (https://soundcloud.com/travelwritersradio)n – required a further 12 hours a week to record, edit and produce to form the hosted weekly episodes you hear on FM radio, or as podcasts via SoundCloud.
We haven’t tallied the number of hours our team has contributed over nearly seven years, but we have conducted about 2000 interviews in covering the lifestyle (food, wine/beverage, experiences) and travel (for leisure or business, destinations and business events) – part of our $A60 billion tourism industry.
Travel Writers Radio returns in 2021. We’ re just gathering our collective breath to return to reporting whatever the new year brings from wherever it matters - from the impact of the ongoing pandemic on local or global tourism, the effect of Trumpism’s decline and the hopes of a Biden presidency, the impact of an increasingly interventionist China on our region and the world’s return to a new normal…whatever that is.
Amongst the apparent gloom and doom we try hard to broadcast positive human interest stories to inform and to inspire you. We do welcome audience feedback by email: info@travelwritersradio.com
Happy New Year…and thanks for listening.