Crikey sent veteran business journalist Glenn Dyer along to the Andrew Olle memorial address by Chris Anderson on Friday and he came away moderately impressed.

As a speeches go it had more going for it that most of the other Andrew Olle memorial addresses I have heard. (And you can check it out here.)

Former Optus chief, Fairfax CEO and now PBL director, Chris Anderson had obviously thought about, consulted and worked with others to produce his speech.

It was not written for him by someone else, as Lachlan Murdoch’s sounded, from time to time, a couple of years ago. Nor was it as rambling and disjointed as the Kerry Stokes address.

It was as interesting as the performance by John Alexander (all these other speeches can be found at the ABC website at the bottom of the above link for the Anderson speech) in 1998, but the delivery was better.

Whether Alexander would hold too many of the ideas he put forward six years ago is open to question given his success in riding the wave at the Packer family’s PBL. Back in 1998 he was a refugee from Fairfax, more notable for having been removed from his position at the Sydney Morning Herald. He had an interest in being more open and appealing.

Now, as we saw the PBL annual meeting this week, Alexander is more interested in being secretive and non-disclosing. Not so his mentor and new PBL director, Chris Anderson.

A distinguished career in journalism and business saw him selected for the address on Friday night in Sydney. No real indignities were reported from the well-behaved audience and there were no wine throwing incidents of the sort between Piers Akerman and Mike Carlton when Lachlan Murdoch spoke two years ago.

It was a very ABC 702 affair but still suitably ‘heavyweight’ insofar as the Sydney media was concerned.

PBL, Nine, the ABC in endless varieties, some scattered News Ltd people, a few commercial radio, a couple of Fairfax tables (one from the Australian Financial Review with Glenn Burge leading a delegation that also included newish deputy editor Paul Bailey, a former colleague of Alexander at the SMH, PBL and Nine), Max Uechtritz and John Westacott were there from Nine and even Max Walsh from PBL and ACP was there. He won a prize in the raffle.

So what did Anderson say?

Some good and telling criticisms of the coverage of the recent election, an interesting commission study of some typical ways all four television networks (excluding SBS) covered four stories from the poll. Check out his conclusions here.

It is worth reading. Some interesting ‘personal remarks from a former journalist, company boss and now director and consumer of the media and TV news.

But in the end, as interesting as aspects were, it was a bit of a let down. The only real idea in the speech was for greater pooling of basic TV news coverage between the four networks. That was an inadequate end to what were some interesting observations.

Pooling, as Anderson said, is already happening in TV News in an ‘informal’ way.

His idea that it be done to lower or control costs to allow more resources to be directed by the networks to other” exclusive’ stories was ‘interesting’ to use the public servant meaning of the word.

It was in fact a bit simplistic and somehow unsatisfying. If that was all he could come up with, then what was the point?

Pooling is practised and ABC managing director, Russell Balding did get it right when he commented after Anderson’s speech that asking the ABC to ‘pool’ on news with Nine, Seven and Ten was like asking for help from The Sopranos! He rejected the idea.

And that is part of the problem. Anderson comes from a mostly print background. Pooling is practiced their. It’s more in the way of copy sharing, say between the Sydney Morning Herald and the The Age, or getting the Australian Financial Review to do the finance sections of the Sydney Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age in Melbourne. Or the copy sharing across all News Ltd papers. And the still growing use of AAP copy to provide the ‘basic’ cover. AAP, of course, is jointly owned by Australia’s print newspaper companies Fairfax, News Ltd and, with a small stake, West Australian Newspapers.

It might be cost effective, but it’s also uncompetitive, job destroying eventually and suits the corporate approach of the publisher, such as ‘branding’ the AFR to a wider audience.

And there is no sign of more resources being applied to the Sun-Herald, whose circulation is shrinking, or the Sunday Age, growing but still uncertain.

Anderson also said any cost saving must not be captured by the corporate side, but must be re-invested in the newsroom.

Well, show me a TV station and its owners that wouldn’t grab all or part of the savings (“one for you, one for me,” I hear the Chief financial Officers chant).

And, as a director of PBL, how far would Anderson go to drive this idea? That wasn’t asked or answered by him, it was a “strictly personal idea”.

And how far would he go on the board if his friend John Alexander, as CEO, tried to introduce it for cost savings, profit boosting reasons, and not for merely re-allocating resources at Nine?

Alexander is also known to have expressed concern at the size of the news and current affairs budget at Nine when he became head of the short-lived PBL media at Nine in 2002.

That he failed to cut or control that budget in his time, that he added significant costs in terms of a failed News and Current Affairs head, staff losses (including me) and the budget is now $10-$15 million a year larger and growing, shows the failure of his style of management.

But would Chris Anderson resign if this idea was introduced and the resources were not re-directed, but the savings snaffled by Alexander at the instigation of the Packers?

Now that’s a test of the integrity of the idea!

A friend of mine at the dinner from Nine made the point that at the moment Nine is spending heavily in the news and current affairs areas to fight off Seven’s challenge.

“Kerry Packer has loosened the purse strings”, he argued.

Just look at Sunday during the election campaign and now. Laurie Oakes in the US, and ACA spending up big on stories. Ray Martin on assignment in the US, would ACA viewers care?

Nine News hiring new staff and going younger. Are there cost savings coming from getting rid of a few older male reporters in the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane newsrooms?

60 minutes has even had its budget expanded for next year.

Why this generosity? The Seven Network is putting pressure on Nine, especially in News and Current Affairs during the key 6-7pm hour.

Ten isn’t in this area, but its business approach of growing and protecting its profit margins by targeting viewers, drives Nine and PBL management green with envy.

Given this, Anderson’s biggest point sort of fell on deaf ears, especially among the non-ABC people there.

“But change will come. Though I suspect it will be economic crisis and consequent management intervention that will bring change. The current advertising boom cannot last forever and there may be major changes in the outdated cross-media laws.”

This will occur during the next year to 18 months. The slowdown and disappearance of the current ad boom is going to wreak havoc, especially in Nine and Seven( and to a lesser extent at Ten) in TV and in Fairfax in print.

The current cost structures and revenue bases have made these businesses hostage to the business cycle, which is still stuck in boom.

But when the growth goes out of boom (and we still have reasonable economic conditions), the boom is effectively over and costs will have to be cut and cuts will have to be made.

That, along with any changes wrought in the media laws, will drive the next lot of changes in the media.

With that in mind, it is a pity that the only cost saving idea that Anderson could come up with was such an old and simplistic one.

It is a pity he never addressed the changes that increased competition and new entrants have brought to commercial radio and the damage that has been wrought in news journalism there, the abortive 2GB-2UE ‘sharing’ deal for instance.

Nor did he understand what was on the screen before him in the video clips he used to illustrate his idea. Four TV networks (five if you add SBS) all competing.

And despite the fact there are 300 journalists in the press gallery, the largest part of that number in Canberra work for two employers, News Ltd and Fairfax. But there are five groups working for five employers in TV – Nine, Seven, Ten, the ABC and SBS, plus the odd other TV group.

Commercial TV is far more competitive than print in this country. The daily battle for ratings (with SBS excluded) and the ABC competing in a half-pregnant way, is far more ferocious than anything in print. And that includes magazines where PBL’s ACP has around 47% of the market, with daylight second.

It’s a pity in a thoughtful speech, Anderson never recognised the intensity of that competition and the stark difference with print. That was perhaps the reason for the selected stories sounding and looking the same and why the pressure to save money from bean counters in TV will eventually fail.

Who among the news bosses or CEO’s of the TV networks would allow their rivals to gain an advantage by pooling resources? And who would pay for it?

TV owners do not take defeat lightly, unless they adopt a Ten like strategy and all but ignore News and Current Affairs except as a service to viewers.

Single crews are a fact of life and differences between news and current affairs crews are blurring and pooling is happening inside stations and networks.

Finally, it was also a pity that Anderson did not address the contentious question of a fourth commercial network, in a ‘private capacity’. Perhaps that was strictly forbidden by the Packers.

But it is the most important idea in the media, more so than changing the cross media and foreign ownership laws, because it could be done in tandem with the legislative alterations.

It doesn’t have to happen, but the argument either in favour or against would have been good for the debate. But debate isn’t the PBL way of things.

A good effort though and worth spending a nice Friday night listening to.