By Glenn Dyer, former supervising producer of Business Sunday

With corporate profits flowing and companies like Coles Myer and Qantas making dramatic statements, you’d expect the country’s two Sunday business chat shows to be right in among it, helping to explain, questioning key CEOs, etc.

But yesterday, Business Sunday and the ABC’s Inside Business opted for the easy route rather than tackling the hard gig of questioning some of our leading corporates on profit results. While both programs talked to ACCC head Graeme Samuel about the new competition regime for Telstra, it was hardly the biggest story around last week.

Here’s a report on the Inside Business interview. Samuel said much the same thing in a live interview on Business Sunday with Ali Moore. Inside Business also talked to ASIC’s Jeff Lucy with the Vizard case uppermost in the mind of both interviewer and interviewee. Interesting, but all a bit too late. But at least Inside Business had a go at being near the pace, even though it avoided Coles Myer or Qantas, as well as the insurance sector (IAG and QBE both reported this past week). The interview with Chris Morris of Computershare, the share registry business, was alright, but marginal given the context of the week.

Both programs avoided any mention of the market rumours, confirmed this morning, that Toll Holdings is bidding for Patrick Corporation. And Business Sunday had part two of project Edwin, the secret plan that the NAB had of snapping up the ANZ under Don Argus. There was nothing in the report that justified holding it over. And the lightweight interview with British business lobbyist, Sir Digby Jones, was of the visiting fireman type.