It's hard to grasp why Communications Minister, Mitch Fifield, felt the need to wade into JJJ's decision to switch the date of its Hottest 100 from January 26 to January 27.
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Just as it is not the business of a radio station, particularly one funded by the tax payer, to play politics by pressuring the Government to change the date of the national day, it is equally unseemly for the government to intervene in the station's programming decisions.
If, as some of JJJ's defenders have claimed, the shift that will now see the top songs go to air on Saturday, January 27, next year was a simple scheduling issue everything be fine.
All media organisations tweak their product to suit their consumers' lifestyles and preferences all the time.
The trouble is the station chose to frame its move as a political act, reportedly based on an in-house survey of its listeners, in recognition of the small, but growing, number of Australians who want the Australia Day date changed because of its "invasion day" connotations.
Those concerns are valid. They have been, controversially, taken on board by a number of local government authorities across the nation, and they are the basis for an ongoing national discussion that will likely unfold in much the same way as the marriage equality narrative.
The trouble is, as Mr Fifield was rather too quick to point out given a more reflective minister may have chosen to keep their distance on this one, January 26 is the date of Australia Day for now.
While JJJ may, or may not, be being entirely honest when it asserts the Hottest 100 is an event that has been happening on Australia Day rather than an Australia Day event, the fact of the matter is most people don't make that distinction.
To even advance the argument is an exercise in sophistry that would seem more appropriate coming from a politician than from the self-appointed guardians of our national youth music heritage.
The station's January countdown, which dates back to 1989, was peaking with the top 100 on Australia Day decades before the current crop of listeners, and performers for that matter, were even born.
It would appear, given some of the online feedback the station has been receiving in the wake of Monday's announcement, that this whole exercise could backfire.
Many listeners have described it as "a bad programming decision" while others have derided it as political correctness gone mad.
A more cynical interpretation of the events is that JJJ, on the one hand, has used a simmering issue involving First Australians to raise its own brand awareness and that Mr Fifield, on the other, has welcomed what is a useful distraction from the Turnbull Government's more pressing problems.
