So at last we have a date — next Thursday — for the launch of the ABC’s much anticipated 24-hour television news service. It will be with us just in the nick of time, or maybe even a little late given that most pundits expect the date of the federal election to be called this weekend.
Most of the issues surrounding the new service have been well and truly hashed over. They are to do with resources and the proper role of the taxpayer-funded broadcaster.
Can hard-pressed ABC correspondents provide depth and immediacy, 24 hours a day? The ABC’s head of continuous news, Gaven Morris, told me this morning that the new channel would be an opportunity to add context to stories in a way that can’t be done in the existing radio and television schedule.
Perhaps, but there is no doubt that the demands of the around-the-clock news schedule are a strain for correspondents expected to file almost immediately they hit the ground on a story, then keep updating as well as finding out new stuff. How to break news as well as cover the existing ground? It’s not easy and there are those within the organisation who fear the new service will make it an even harder gig.
And the ABC is still recovering in reputational terms from its less than vigorous pursuit, on radio at least, of the story it broke a couple of weeks ago, when Julia Gillard was preparing her challenge to Kevin Rudd.
The success of the new channel will depend largely on the efficiency the ABC brings to using its existing resources better. It will depend on vigour and energy. The service is being put together with little new investment — and the ABC has not released the costings.
As for the proper role of the public broadcaster, my own view is that the ABC has no choice but to put this new service together. We live in an era where news that is NOT continuous is not really news.
News Limited, which is increasingly spruiking for its corporate affiliate Sky News in The Australian, has given the new service a kicking even before its launch on two contradictory grounds. First, the argument is that the taxpayer-funded broadcaster should not do 24-hour rolling news at all, given that commercial operators already provide a service. And second, the argument is made that the ABC shouldn’t do it because it can’t do it well enough — with the performance on the Gillard challenge offered as evidence.
All this is self-interested for News, of course, given the increasing links between it and Sky News. Meanwhile, media editor of The Australian Geoff Elliott and columnist Caroline Overington are to host a new segment for Sky News on media matters.
And at the same time I understand Elliott and other reporters are preparing a major series on the ABC, which will canvas issues such as the proper role of the public broadcaster and its charter responsibilities.
There are real issues here, of course, and the ABC is, as our most important cultural institution, always a fit subject for scrutiny. The ABC charter is well overdue for an overhaul, as I have commented elsewhere. It will be interesting to see if The Australian is able to bring itself to do a fair job of the series. Its recent performance, with the Monday media section increasingly reading like corporate self-promotion, invites scepticism about this.
Meanwhile, what is new on ABC News 24? A great deal of modern media management involves the cutting and pasting of content from one place to another, and this channel will be no different, with programs such as Lateline, Lateline Business, Stateline and Four Corners given fresh platforms.
The bulk of the schedule will be rolling news, but there are also three new programs. The ABC’s online opinion site The Drum will become the basis of a daily panel discussion show, featuring key guests and presented by Annabel Crabb. A new program The World will run every weeknight and in abbreviated form on weekends, and will feature the leading stories from ABC news locally and worldwide. And there will be a new interview program, One Plus One, hosted by former foreign correspondent Jane Hutcheon.
It all kicks off at 7.30pm Thursday next week, with a big to-do on both ABC 1 and the new (digital only) channel.
Margaret do I read correctly, media editor of The Australian Geoff Elliott will be employed by the ABC while still working for Murdoch’s Australian? If yes surely a conflict of interests, given Murdochs financial interest in Sky News. Of course if the last 6 months is a guide, the ABC News and Current Affairs section has more than a friendly relationship with News Ltd. Nothing has changed in that area, with the so called radio 24 hour news programme, well and truely married to the Liberal right and blatantly so.
I will observe with great interest the editorial leanings of the new 24×7 news channel.
Will it be carried on Austar, I wonder? If so, I’ll watch, if for no other reason than to perform the usual Bias Watch.
I wonder what ratio ABC 24×7 will come up with in what I call the Is:Ir ration.
That’s the ratio between the number of times a representative of the Israeli Government is interviewed on air – and the number of times a representative of the Iranian Government is inteviewed on air.
For ABC1, I estimate the ratio is 100:1 or higher.
How about 1 : 1? (Still not a bad deal for a nation less than ten times as populous as Iran.)
What WOULD be a useful additional function for the new 24 x 7 publicly-funded news channel would be to carry old and hard to find material such as this excellent video directed by Daryl Dellora back in the 1990s…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UMKa184pvs
That particular video should be compulsory viewing for all Australian politicians and mainstream journalists, IMO, even if they have to be strapped down to watch it with eyeballs held open 🙂
I totally support the ABC’s venture. The UK has BBC World competing with the Sky news channel. The BBC channel goes into much greater depth in its interviews with talking heads and gives much better coverage of overseas news.
The same will be true here. The Sky channel and the ABC channel will be two entirely different products. It is absurd to argue that Sky meets our requirements 100% and should have a monopoly as the only continuous news provider.
@ SYD WALKER:
A ten+ year old video is hardly NEWS. It may be new to the audience you are targetting, but so would the Dead Sea Scrolls or anything in the original sanskrit.
Regarding Annabelle Crab and discussion of The Drum: I like The Drum but Annabelle has developed a habit of cutting across here interviewees frequently and speaking 19-to-the-dozen. Surely the ABC has guidelines somewhere to the art of courteous and effective discussion on air.
If the station is called News 24 why didn’t they allocate it as digital channel 24 – instead News 24 is dislodging ABC2 from digital channel 21. Not very logical. Keep it simple, sweetie.