So join him on Weekend Half Time At the Races, the ABC’s most comprehensive racing program! (Sundays, 10:05 est)

With two of Australia’s best Sports journalists on our team – Debbie Spillane and Tulsen Tollett – this network is your most reliable source for news across all sports … from footy to football, horse racing to MotoGP.

Have you dipped into ABC NewsRadio’s two new podcasts yet?

Fresh from a well-earned summer breather, our national political editor Marius Benson is back in the saddle with The Political Wrap, his sharp weekly insight into the corridors of power.

The Weekly Post is also a great way to catch up on the major news events of the past seven days.

So please have a listen - and let us know what you think of these two new arrivals!

There is no doubt at all who our listeners have deemed to be ABC NewsRadio’s NewsMaker of the Year.

Even in the strictest of news terms, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a deserved winner of the title, helping shape the news around us, and perhaps – as some believe – forever change the way it’s shared.

As well, Assange actually (if unwittingly) became part of the international news cycle, perhaps the most talked about individual on the planet in 2010.

Other women and men dominating the news over the past 12 months, and so nominated for our inaugural title, included the Chilean miners, Mother Nature, the Iceland volcano Eyjafjalla-kull, Bart Cummings (and yes, his young champion So You Think!), Ricky Ponting and politicians Julia Gillard, Tony Abbot, Kevin Rudd, Bob Brown, Tony Windsor, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Andrew Bolt, Richard Dawkins and Geoffrey Wright scored a vote each, as did the unforgettable Paul the Psychic  Octopus.

And let’s face it:

Paul was surely the wisest of headline-makers in 2010, not to mention the most successful!

At this network, it seems like every week is a major news week.

And Information about the most important stories moves so fast now, it’s often hard keeping up with the significant nuances of these stories as they develop.

Our new podcast The Weekly Post should help us all stay on top of the important news each week, featuring the best interviews that our top team of journalsits have done over the past seven days.

This week’s debut Post includes Marius Benson’s chat with Kevin Rudd about WiklLeaks and its Australian shake-out.

So make a regualr date with The Weekly Post, ABC NewsRadio’s weekly news-in-review podcast

You, too, can get one-click updates and links to our live interviews, daily news polls, and much more at www.twitter.com/ABC_NewsRadio

If you already have a Twitter account, then simply follow ABC_NewsRadio – that’s ABC (underscore) NewsRadio.

We’ll also be alerting you to breaking news right across the week with regular ‘tweets’.

That’s ABC NewsRadio: your news, now.

A very hot & heavy week in Denmark, but to what end ?
Too much heat and not enough action from world leaders.
Or to put it another way: so this is Christmas and what have we done ?
So…some music news to end the week:

Swedish pop icons ABBA will be inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year, along with punk rockers the Stooges, art-rockers Genesis, reggae’s Jimmy Cliff and beat band The Hollies.

“ABBA first put Sweden on rock’s global map,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced, with the four Swedes poised to join the likes of heavy metal group Black Sabbath, punk pioneers the Sex Pistols, and jazz trumpeter Miles Davis in rock music’s pantheon.

The five groups will be officially inducted into the rock and roll shrine at a ceremony in New York on March 15 next year.

After this ceremony, films recounting the five groups’ careers and a display of artefacts will be on display at the Hall of Fame Museum, while just about every song written by each of the bands will feature on a computerized jukebox.

That will mean that music fans could segue from the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” to Genesis’s “One-eyed Hound” and on to ABBA’s “Waterloo”, before selecting “Many Rivers to Cross” by Jimmy Cliff or The Hollies’ “The Air that I Breathe.”

In light of this, it’s intriguing to recall that legendary British rock band Led Zeppelin were branded “old fashioned” and “unconvincing” by BBC producers, when they auditioned in 1969, according to archives released by the broadcaster Thursday.

David Bowie and Marc Bolan’s T-Rex were also criticised when they first tried to get their music on the BBC, a report added.

Led Zeppelin, fronted by singer Robert Plant, went on to sell more than 300 million albums worldwide and are viewed as one of most important groups in rock history with their mix of blues, folk and rock guitar.

They were invited to appear before a BBC audition panel in 1969, one year after they were signed, but faced a highly critical response.

One producer said they were “not for daytime radio — specialist listening only”, another described them as “derivative” and “unconvincing”, while a third said the group had “an old-fashioned sound”.

Led Zeppelin, comprising Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, went on to play several sessions for BBC radio.

The band, who had a string of hits in the 1970s including “Stairway to Heaven”, split up in 1980 following the death of Bonham, who famously choked on his own vomit following a drinking binge.

Bowie, meanwhile, was dismissed as “a singer devoid of personality” when he tried to get his songs on the BBC in 1965, and Bolan’s T-Rex was labelled “crap and pretentious crap at that,” according to the Times.

An early version of the Rolling Stones was also rejected by a BBC panel.

___

Mark - Breakfast E.P.

Well, this is my last offering for a while, as I’ve got a few weeks off.

So I thought I would write something profound.

Despite the fact my kids have got all sorts of orders in with Santa for expensive toys and the latest gizmos, they’ll probably have more fun over the Christmas hols making cubby houses out of the lounge cushions, or making creations with bits of cardboard, sticky tape and a pair of scissors.

They’ve asked me to save old toilet rolls and empty tissue boxes.

And I got in big trouble recently when they caught me putting an old ice cream container out in the recycling.

So this morning I give you my festive season craft tip.

A perfect way to recycle a pannetone box:

recyclers-r-us

Sort of “Where the Wild Things Are” meets Ned Kelly.

Hours of endless fun.

Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

(Editor’s Note: Mark needs this spell….!!….and seriously, deserves it.)

Here at NewsRadio, we’re all monitoring a range of media throughout the Brekkie show, and one of the TV programs we keep an eye on during the course of the morning is ABC2 Breakfast.

I often catch snippets of sport with Paul Kennedy on that show (as well the sport bulletins and interviews on BBC-TV, CNN, Channels 7 and 9 and FoxSports.)

Dipping in and out means I don’t get to see everything all the way through and so I don’t know if the debate about netball versus basketball that was set up by Virginia Trioli yesterday, during the sports chat with Paul on ABC2, ever actually developed. But I’m weighing in anyway. If it didn’t happen, then consider this a pre-emptive strike!

After seeing some footage from the weekend of Australian basketball legend, Lauren Jackson, playing back in the Women’s National Basketball League after returning from overseas, Virginia made a comment to the effect of “we must discuss at some stage how much more difficult it is to score in netball than basketball.” She then made a reference to the rings being smaller, and she might’ve mentioned the absence of a backboard as well.

You might be relieved to know that even people who work in the media argue back with the TV or radio on occasion. And I had a few sharp words to say to Virginia in reply to that.

Yes, the netball ring is smaller than the basketball hoop (38cm compared to 45cm) and not being able to deflect a shot off the backboard means the netball goalshooters need to have perfect placement. But I would submit there are many other challenges that face a shooter in basketball than there are in netball.

For a start, the basketball is slightly bigger and harder than a netball ball, making the bounce more dramatic when it hits the hoop.

But more importantly, defenders can make physical contact with a shooter while they’re launching their shot in basketball, something certainly not allowed in netball, where defenders can stand nearly a metre away and wave their arms in front of a goalshooter but can’t actually make any contact whatsoever. Only two players on court at any one time are allowed to take a shot in netball, and they do so from a static position, having time to balance, take aim and put up their shot unhindered.

What’s more, the shooters in netball don’t have to cover full length of the court in between shots. The goalshooter never leaves the third of the court where her goal is, the wing attack is allowed to move across two thirds of the court.

In basketball, the court is 2.5 metres shorter and slightly narrower than in netball, but every player is required to move across all areas of it in defence and attack and every player needs to be able to shoot.

The only time a basketballer gets to shoot an uncontested shot is from the foul line. And the foul line is 3.96 metres from the front of the rim.

Basketball also tests shooting from a greater range. The shooting circle in basketball is 6.25m in radius. In netball, it’s 4.9m. In basketball, you can shoot from outside that area as well and be rewarded with three points for the extra distance, so a good all-round shooter in basketball needs to be able to put the ball in from much further out than the specialist shooters in netball.

So, yes Virginia, there is a difference in the size of ring and the degree of accuracy needed when shooting in netball. But nobody in basketball gets the luxury of being a specialist shooter and standing at one end of the court waiting for the ball to be delivered to them. Everyone in basketball has to shoot, they have to be able to do it while someone is banging into their body, they have to be able to do it from further out and they have to run the full length of the court in between most shots.

I don’t think a seven centimetres bigger hoop size and a backboard makes shooting a doddle for the women in basketball, who incidentally at international level have to be able to go head to head with super powers like USA, China and Russia, not normally just beat New Zealand for a world title.

Your shot, Virginia

___

Glen - Presenter …

‘He’s a celebrity - get me out of here’

Scandal-hit golfer Tiger Woods’ wife has bought a vast beachfront estate on an island near Stockholm that can only be reached by boat .

Woods is taking a hiatus from professional golf after admitting he had cheated on his wife, amid reports that 11 women had claimed to have had relationships with him.

Am I the only one starting to get a bit suspicious about the increasingly long line of women (lots of porn stars, in particular) who claim to be among the Tiger conquests?

None of them would be keen on boosting their profile or furthering their career in the sex biz, would they ?

The lesson of it all is to not become the content provider for an increasingly voracious media that ’s never been more hungry for material; the appetite for stories is so immense these days that a story like this that just keeps giving is manna from heaven.

And the media space has never been larger, and harder to fill. It needs feeding constantly and will gladly eat you up and spit you out. God forbid you prove to be worthy of more than one course.

Certainly, the online community have been grateful for the increased traffic the Tiger story has created . I think it was a Yahoo executive who said it was as good for business as Michael Jackson’s death.

Even better, she added, “It’s hard to sell ads next a funeral.” Nice.

So the moral : Sex is better than death.

Just don’t get caught.

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

And Tony Abbott is not exactly an unknown commodity for Australian voters.

But taking on the leadership is a point of renewal in any career and the “new” Tony Abbott is selling himself hard to the electorate.

And while he is trying to make a good impression, the Government is doing its level best to encourage doubts in the public mind over the Opposition leader.

The key words being chanted, from the Prime Minister, down are: “extremist…. erratic….policy on the run….loose talk….”

This Government mantra will continue through the next year as the never-ending election campaign intensifies as the election itself draws nearer - August is the best guess.

On the other side, the Greek Chorus of the Coalition will chant: “…..the Government’s big tax….”

This exchange cascades on through a litany of claim and misrepresentation:

“You want to reintroduce Workchoices!!”

“You’re just big tax and big spend!!”

So we must look through that blizzard of slogans to see what is going on.

The truth is in there, somewhere; it accumulates through a study of what people say over time about an issue like - in this case, climate change.

Ask any politician publicly about the issue and all of them - every man and woman, from Cory Bernardi to Bob Brown - will profess they believe climate change is real and something should be done about it.

So there’s no point in asking that question. Motherhood is the answer.

Dig down and you’ll see revealing patterns.

That’s why the Four Corners program which triggered the Liberal leadership rockslide was so powerful. It showed Nick Minchin and others expressing their misgivings about climate change. Nothing that new in what they said - and nothing that definite.

Nick Minchin’s hardest line was to say a majority of Liberals shared his view that the case of human action being the main driver of climate change had not been proven.

But when his views were lined up with other doubters and presented on your TV on a Monday evening, the impact was much more than the sum of its parts.

The reality of both Government and Opposition is hard to define…

And harder still in the increasing pace of spin in the months (eight?) between now and when you participate in the only poll that matters.