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BNET AUSTRALIA'S DAILY PODCAST 'BTALK' CELEBRATES 100 EPISODES

BTalk Australia offers 100 things a business needs to know and counting

SYDNEY, 22 October, 2008: Australian business is losing its innovative spark, excessive debt is leading us to the next Great Depression, we're ignoring the catastrophic impact of peak oil and business is not ready for emissions trading.

Whether you agree with these statements or not, these topics and more are prompting discussion and debate with BTalk host Phil Dobbie each day through daily podcast BTalk Australia on BNET Australia. Since June this year, BTalk's first 100 episodes have provided insight and guidance to Australia's management community with expert interviews and business leaders sharing their experiences and expertise on today's demanding management environment.

These management tips and guidance aren't all doom and gloom -- helpful advice and insights are regularly featured, such as how to cut back on your business phone bill, tips on retaining great staff, advice on how to manage internal communication when downsizing and insights regarding how business can cut costs in the call centre just to name a few.

Sometimes the discussion gets a little controversial. Guests have included telco analyst Paul Budde who described Telstra's attitude to competitors and government as "arrogant". Steve Keen said that neo-classical economics has fuelled the credit crisis and the Auditor General was wrong to criticise the Lara Bingle tourism campaign because, apparently, it worked.

BTalk Australia has also offered plenty of time for humour - In a popular episode we asked how Starbucks expected to survive in Australia, the land of coffee snobs. Why do we speak a language of corporate jargon in the office in an effort to sound clever? Is a professional's importance in a business directly related to the amount of emails they receive? Such business conundrums are faced head-on in BTalk's daily yarn.

You can listen back to the first 100 episodes in the Aussie Rules section of BNET Australia (BNET.com) or listen to Monday's centenary podcast, which features a soundbite from each show so far. According to presenter Phil Dobbie, podcasting the show has provided flexibility seldom available in traditional media formats: "The great thing about podcasts is that we're not restricted by the time constraints of radio or TV. BTalk's format has offered the perfect platform to not only touch on key subjects of interest to today's managers, but also get deeper into issues."

BTalk's latest episode is a great example of how the podcast covers a wide range of topics of interest to the business community. Senator Barnaby Joyce will be expressing his views on competition on the grocery sector, Noel Dyett from the Real Estate Institute is asked about housing affordability and debt and George Savvides, CEO of Medibank, talks about the future of the health insurance industry.

Phil Dobbie's role as BTalk Australia presenter is to make a broad variety of specialist business topics accessible to a broader community. It has quickly become one of very few outlets for insightful, intelligent talk around the issues that matter to Australian managers and business professionals.

BTalk Australia can be heard online on BNET Australia (BNET.com), and can be subscribed to on iTunes. Look in the Management and Marketing section of the iTunes podcast directory.