The ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, has really stepped up in the past month, talking on Rupert Murdoch and his News Ltd hordes and then volunteering to educate us on all things digital, as well as kindly offering to be the Voice of Australia.
In fact, apart from the meanderings of the Sun King last weekend at the end of his latest Australian progress, Mark Scott has dominated the media agenda since September with a series of well-thought-out speeches.
But I reckon he should sit down and have a little chat to himself and his budgetary folk, plus the management of ABC TV and make some far more important and more immediate changes.
Anyone watching ABC TV last night would have seen the Four Corners report on the Liberal Party and climate change (and why was reporter Sarah Ferguson allowed to nod her head so many times while in camera shot?) and then another solid Media Watch, which helpfully undermined Rupert’s claim to have quality journalism in his papers and websites.
Both eps were the finals for 2009, just as last Thursday’s ep of Q&A was the last for the year.
It’s a seasonal thing; you can almost set your annual clock for it. Summer doesn’t start on December 1, it starts when Four Corners and Media Watch go on summer break in early November.
Yes, its only the first week in November and members of the ABC’s sheltered workshops are going off on beach leave, with a “see you in February” as they leave the studio and turn out the lights.
Over in the battered commercial TV sector, 60 Minutes is still on air and will be to the end of the month. Seven’s Sunday Night is still sticking around to entertain the grown-ups and others who might watch. In fact it’s real TV from the commercial sector, compared to the short season and easy working conditions of the ABC.
I know there is an argument about budgets at the ABC, but my point is: instead of going down the grandiose world of being all things digital and all things external as the Voice of Australia (and soft diplomatic power), the ABC should find the money to at least extend its flagship programs until the end of November. Or can’t the luvvies handle the extra three to four weeks of work?
But this is not a question of just getting more money; it’s about getting the internal priorities of the ABC right. And the principal priority should be to those who listen and watch ABC radio and ABC TV. If the ABC is to justify the claim that it does more news and current affairs than the commercial networks, it has to support that ambition by making sure its flagships news and current affairs programs are on air for as long as possible.
Is the ABC board out to lunch? Should it be telling management, find the money to extend the season of the flagship prorgams.
News and politics doesn’t take a holiday. The 7.30 Report is there and next month, Kerry O’Brien will take his usual end-of-year break (after taking school holiday breaks during the year) and disappear. I don’t begrudge him a break, but he certainly gets far more than the reporters, producers, camera people and editors, etc, do on the program.
The ABC has been doing this and getting away with it for years. It’s a lurk that shouldn’t happen. Taxpayers deserve better, ABC viewers deserve better.
Mark Scott has the well-supported ambition of making the ABC into something more than just a national broadcaster. It is starting to happen in some bits, but in others it resembles a sheltered workshop. Just find the money and end the early marks. Part-time current affairs is no longer good enough.
Indeed, it never was.
Look, it’s been a billion years since I worked for the ABC… t’was ABC Radio 891 Adelaide until 1991… but this annual shutdown was as frustrating then as it is now.
I reckon we should have “normal programming” running right up to the last week before Christmas. I reckon we should have it running right through the so-called holiday season too.
But the problem is simple to understand: the ABC doesn’t have the resources to cover people on holidays and training. People are entitled to 4 weeks annual leave, and they also need to take time out for training and development — something to which I reckon every organisation should be allocating at least 5% of its time, and in the case of a leader like the ABC maybe 10% or more.
And then there’s time to step back from the daily grind and reflect on what you’re doing and plan the changes and improvement.
If the ABC doesn’t have the budget to provide coverage for people when all those things happen — and it doesn’t — then there’s no alternative but to wrap up the annual cycle in November. It sucks, I agree, but what’s the alternative? Which programs will you drop?
P.S. I’d have a lot more respect for this piece if it didn’t resort to the clichéd stereotype of ABC employees as “luvvies”.
Mr Dyer is right but he should know is that for the past 15 years no ABC manager at whatever level and whatever division has dared talk about anything but new services (or if you must ‘products’) as a way of getting a bit more budget. To redress the cuts made over the years has been deemed to be counter productive and anti-change. Got to talk about the digital future, mate. Always, often and forever. And BTW in radio producers have for several weeks now been making programs to be played over summer – double the workload in many cases. So the predictable ‘luvvies’ quip aint even in the ball park.
Glen, why is that Mark Scott’s speech’s are well thought out, yet Rupert’s are meandering?
It’s the crikey taint on everything to do with News and Rupert I fear…take the prejudice out Glenn and write like a journalist for a change.
Ps I think Mark Scott’s starting to believe his own publicity…today Australia, tomorrow the world
Well, actually in a world in which everyone from Al Jazeera to Zoo News is thrusting it in your face, I think more is less. I have to declare an interest here: powerful childhood memories of exploring the NSW Central Coast in a summer daze. The perfect antidote to the Protestant work ethic which is clearing its throat loudly on these pages. Personally, I’ve never quite recovered from summer football.
I believe Climate Change is nature’s revenge on us for prostituting its seasons.
As for Auntie perhaps the solution is Let the Interns do it (Crikey should love that one). In the meantime I’m quite prepared to wait until March, or even July next year for the 4 Corners Special: The Deliquesence of Rupert Murdoch.