This was published 7 years ago
Anthony Rendell, pioneer of ABC current affairs who reformed BBC World Service
In the early 1960s Hobart-based ABC journalist Anthony Rendell thought he would be sacked for grilling his chairman in an interview but was instead rewarded with a posting to New York. The man saluted by colleagues as a quiet achiever went on to transform the BBC's World Service into the 21st century.
Rendell was a leading innovator of early ABC current affairs television and policy making and distinguished himself as an executive of the BBC's World Service. While mostly a behind-the-scenes man, he was a talented broadcaster when the occasion demanded, as he ably demonstrated as a foreign correspondent for the ABC in New York in 1964 and in London from 1966-69.
Current affairs and foreign broadcasting pioneer Anthony Rendell.
Anthony Alan Rendell was born in Adelaide in 1936. His father Alan Rendell was a headmaster and an innovative leader in primary education in South Australia, and his mother Annie (nee Rice) was also a teacher. Having gained a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History at Adelaide University, he joined the ABC in 1957 as a specialist trainee in the Talks Department. He moved to Hobart where he was promoted to supervisor of talks in 1958.
He conceived of the first State-based television current affairs program, titled Week. In the days before videotape and with very little access to film for state-wide stories the live telecast was a nail-biting affair. There was a rare error of editorial judgment when a "public piano smashing competition" between a team of world champion Tasmanian axe men and university students was to be televised in Hobart's Franklin Square, compered by the visiting British rock star and English peer Screaming Lord Sutch. It was cancelled when the State's Minister for Education was told this might encourage louts to break into the homes of little old ladies and smash up their pianos.
Week became extremely popular and by 1966 had morphed into a three-nights-a-week current affairs program named Lineup. Again crafted by Rendell, Lineup was adopted as an experimental model nationally, so becoming the precursor to the controversial This Day Tonight, compered by Bill Peach in 1967. Current affairs television in Australia was never the same again.
By then Rendell was in New York. He admitted later he was a little surprised to get the post as he thought he had blown his chances after a tough interview with the ABC's increasingly testy chairman of the ABC Board, Sir Richard Boyer. "I had a feeling I might as well end my career with all flags flying," he said. But a bruised Sir Richard later wrote a warm commendation for the New York job, and Rendell went on from there to report from London.
He returned to Sydney to be the personal assistant to the ABC's long-serving general manager Talbot Duckmanton, who immediately also put him in charge of the ABC's Secretariat – the organisation's senior policy making body – from 1970 to 1973.
He decided on a career change, and moved to London with his wife Anne-Marie, joining the BBC where he soon made his mark as managing editor radio current affairs. In 1980 he moved to the BBC's World Service saying later that it was rather like the British motorcycle industry which once led the world until it collapsed through failure to see the next steps". As editor of the English Service, in the words of John Tusa, former World Service managing director "he played a crucial part in changing the World Service in program terms and in introducing a flexible but far-sighted strategy to the World Service as a whole". Mention was made of Rendell's unique management style, winning confidence without the need for confrontation. Somehow he managed to fit in a part-time MA at University College, London.
During the next 15 years he was recognised as one of the BBC's best forward planners, crafting the renewal not only of program philosophy, but of funding agreements, and laying the foundations for the transformation of the World Service into the 21st century.
He retired in 1995, but in 1999 was stricken with advanced bowel cancer. When he became conscious after a major operation, his surgeon told him his chemotherapy would begin in 36 hours. Rendell asked him if that would cure his cancer. "No, but it will give you more time," he was told. He then asked about what chemotherapy involved, and decided not to go ahead with it. As he later told his sister Rosemary: "It is very hard to say no to a man in a dark suit."
It was a good decision, as he lived for another productive 15 years, continuing to write about management and strategy as well as working with the British Palliative Care movement, exploring innovative ways to manage the experience of terminal illness.
His wife Anne-Marie whom he married in 1961 and who died of breast cancer in 2008 was the love of his life, and shared his interest in books, music and leisurely walks around Kensington Gardens. While in Sydney he drove a MG sports car, and in London rode a motorbike. He was a cricket tragic and enthusiastic chess player.
Rendell is survived by his sister Rosemary. His sister Margaret predeceased him.
Tim Bowden and Charles Graham