What is it with the ABC under current managing director, Mark Scott?
Today’s launch of the A-pac public information channel on the Foxtel pay-TV platform features a prominent ABC radio personality anchoring Australia Day coverage from Cooktown. The presenter is Richard Fidler of 612 ABC Brisbane. He is also heard in Sydney hosting the Conversation Hour series on that city’s top rating 702 Local Radio station.
The fact that A-pac is a direct competitor to the ABC’s proposed 24 hour news channel — which, like A-pac, will feature live coverage of parliament — seems to have been missed in the corridors of power when someone in ABC management approved today’s broadcast.
Apart from the absurdity of the ABC allowing one of its presenters to anchor a Day One broadcast on a competing channel, Fidler’s A-pac stint highlights an extraordinary double-standard that has been allowed to flourish under Mark Scott reign.
Fidler’s colleague on the ABC’s Brisbane station, morning presenter Madonna King, is a regular contributor to Channel Nine’s Today Show. Recently, she did a live cross from the Gold Coast propped under a large umbrella featuring several enormous Nine logos. She also writes for The Courier Mail — for which she no doubts receives a fee – and of course it’s been noted in Crikey previously that her husband is the editor of the same paper. This is another clear conflict of interest that is allowed to continue on Scott’s watch.
Scott’s regularly claims that the ABC is the point of difference, the last bastion of editorial rigour in Australia’s electronic media. What nonsense that is, when a prime-time presenter on the ABC’s third largest radio station is writing for her husband’s newspaper in a one-newspaper town!
Then there was the staggering example of King’s other prime-time colleague, breakfast presenter Spencer Howson, anchoring an entire week of the Extra program on Nine in Brisbane. Heavily cross-promoted by Nine, it was simply unbelievable to see one of the ABC’s highest rating breakfast hosts helping to boost Nine’s flagging six o’clock news results by hosting the all-important 5:30pm lead-in show.
King, Fidler and Howson are not alone. Radio presenters around the country are actively encouraged to editorialise in newspapers. Again, they get a fee but what does the ABC get in return? It’s argued, internally, that the columns are a “free” cross-promotional opportunity but really, it’s nothing more than another chink in the ABC’s independence from its major commercial competitors.
And make no mistake: the ABC does see itself as competing in the commercial media space. Mark Scott has personally driven the ABC’s charge into the online space and in particular, is poised to sell-off the entire chain of ABC Shops to a major high street competitor. Scott sees the shops as a liability. The “rivers of gold” are in the ABC’s back catalogue of audio and video content which Scott intends to distribute, not via CD and DVD through ABC Shops, but online via Internet downloads. Distribution costs slashed, profits enormous!
But back to the contradiction of ABC presenters spruiking for other commercial organisations: what about top-rating ABC Melbourne breakfast presenter, Red Symons, fronting TV commercials for hardware chain, Thrifty Link? Is there a more blatant abuse of the ABC’s commercial independence? Yet the ABC allows it to continue, without question.
There is an additional hypocrisy at play here. The conditions of employment for the majority of ABC radio broadcasters — the hundreds of “non-stars” who present programs across Australia from 60 local stations in city and regional centres — simply forbid ABC employees from engaging in anything with even the slightest hint of commercial activity. There would be hell to pay if the ABC breakfast presenter in Dubbo took on a second job reading WIN News at night, or if the morning presenter in Bunbury made a few extra bucks by running off a few TV spots for the local hardware store.
So why is it okay for some “names” in capital city markets to work for rival, commercial organisations and not okay for the overwhelming majority of ABC employees? The answer is, it’s not okay for any ABC employees to commercialise their positions within the ABC. The ABC and its managing director shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways. Either the ABC is independent — truly independent — or it’s not. And right now, you’d have to say, it’s not.
Richard Alston and Jonathon Sheirs did their job to perfection didn’t they? To emasculate a once great organisation and turn it into the commercially driven parody that it is today was an achievement indeed.
Our conscience and soul have been destroyed by the decline of the ABC, how can we change it back?
Could I suggest that those who would like to do so make their voices heard in the corridors of power.
Go on, start agitating.
Mike Crook
If the ABC presenters do their programs and fulfil their obligations to the ABC, what’s wrong with them doing something else in their own time including — shock horror! — having and expressing their own opinions? Given that ABC salaries are hardly up to Donald Trump standards, what’s wrong with them pocketing a few bucks for their efforts? Or does working for the ABC mean you forgo all rights to independent thought and expression?
If any other employer gagged their employees like this, we’d complain about interference with their democratic rights, wouldn’t we? How does having an opinion and expressing it threaten the independence of the ABC? A strong, truly independent ABC would recognise that its staff do have opinions, and be comfortable with that, I say.
[Disclosure: I worked for ABC Radio 1985-1991. During that entire time I had no opinions on anything ever. Ask my colleagues. Then again, maybe don’t.]
@Tom McLoughlin: You’re thinking of Mike Bailey. He’s now with Channel Nine after his unsuccessful run as the ALP candidate for North Sydney.
The practice you mention are not confined to the State Capitals. Here in Canberra one of our local ABC radio personalities Andrea Close also fronts TV and radio ads for a local furniture retaller. Previous to her time at the ABC she was a weather person on one of the local commercial TV station so she is a local celebrity. Andrea has been doing her commercial stint for the past few years with the apparent blessing of the ABC chiefs. When you say staff are forbidden from commercial work is this official policy or some unspoken rule?
a very apposite item. the abc long ago stopped being independent and an alternative to the private sector media. its news divisions and some of its current affairs output are little more than cheap and nasty versions (if that is possible) of the daily telegraph. it is not doing its basic daily news job, it is not fulfilling its wider role as a national public broadcaster, its staff are compromised to the point that abc + professionalism + ethics are contradictions in terms, and its executive judgment is dreadful (vide the recent puff piece for John Howard). If what your correspondent says about Ms King et al is true, then they and Mr Scott should be brought before the board or the abc’s ethics committee (if it has one any more). And the abc should not receive one more cent in public fundiing.
Not really on point but the Sydney weather man, alp federal candidate against Joe Hockey, sorry can’t remember his name, was doing the weather on a commercial station last night here. Fair enough as he’s moved on from that long haul working for the ABC in the demise of the Howard machine. But it was a surprise which shows the power of the abc branding, and he looked a tad uncomfortable.