As the ABC’s News and Current Affairs division’s employees lobby to save programs from cutbacks in the current round of budget cuts instigated by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, some of those highly paid journalists and producers should keep a weather eye on what is happening in London at the BBC, where Panorama, the template long-form current affairs program, is about to be revamped completely.
The ABC and its news and current affairs staff have long claimed that programs such as Four Corners, Lateline and Q&A are locally developed ideas and deserve being retained because they provide an Australian perspective, which they do. But they are not uniquely Australian. Four Corners’ template was borrowed from Panorama. Lateline mimics a program of the same name on the ABC Network in the US (and on the Nine Network here). Q&A is based on the UK program, Question Time (which is actually produced for the BBC by a Wales-based independent production company called Mentorn Media, not done in-house as Q&A is).
But the BBC is cutting 415 jobs from its news and current affairs division. Net cuts will be just over 200 once new digital jobs and transfers are finalised. Perhaps the highest profile of the cuts have occurred to Panorama, the flagship program for the “Beeb” which is now being reduced to a rump of itself. Panorama started in 1953 and provided the inspiration for Four Corners and similar programs around the world.
In fact, it is interesting to chart the cuts made at the BBC — a report released three years ago this month claimed the BBC was cutting local news programs “to save Panorama”. By July of this year however, the number of job losses had grown to 415 and the scope had expanded to include Panorama.
According to UK media reports, including The Guardian, Panorama will “scale back its investigative journalism and feature more analysis and familiar faces such as Fiona Bruce following criticism of the corporation’s current affairs output and an exodus of senior staff”.
The Guardian reported:
“Uncertainty continues to surround Panorama, with acting editor Ceri Thomas having to reapply for the role and its four-strong team of reporters likely to remain until next spring, nearly a year after they were told they were being made redundant as part of a £48m cost-cutting package.”
The TV licence fee, which funds the BBC, was frozen in 2010 for the current funding period of six years. These cuts are part of that longer and wider program of budget reductions and funding changes in the hundreds of millions of pounds forced on the BBC by the decision. The BBC is a far larger and more dominating media beast in the UK market than the ABC is in Australia. It is an unfortunate irony that many media managements only focus on ratings, performance and costs when they are forced to during times of revenue strains or cuts. That applies to what the BBC is enduring and what the ABC is about to undergo (for good or bad).
The message for ABC staff is that nothing should be exempt from examination in good times or bad. Change happens and has to be accommodated, even when it involves iconic programs like Lateline and Four Corners. The forces at work in the media are generally operating faster on print media than on electronic forms, but they will not go away. The ABC has to look at itself to see if it is using public money efficiently. No one should be exempt, and to claim otherwise, as some of those campaigning from inside the ABC have done over Lateline, is no different to what we have seen from rent-seekers (unions and companies) claiming exemption from tariff cuts and other withdrawals of assistance. And if the cuts are not to be made in News and Current Affairs, where else should they be made?
The ABC’s charter is aimed at all Australians, not just the employees (especially the highly remunerated) of the News and Current Affairs division. ABC TV and ABC Radio are just as important. Ratings are not everything for a public broadcaster, but they do provide a view of what the audience likes and doesn’t like. The luvvies and others in ABC News and Current Affairs shouldn’t get too precious about cutbacks, after all, they will get no sympathy from print journalists who have been in the firing line for years.
If Glenn Dyer wishes his views to be taken seriously, he can do better than to take smarmy pot-shots at ABC staff and supporters. Name-calling (“luvvies”, seriously?) and repeated references to the apparently-appalling fact that some ABC presenters are well-paid (no doubt a fraction of their commercial counterparts, but I digress) do not constitute an argument for this government’s prospective butchering of the ABC, which is being done for reasons of politics and ideology, not hypothetical budgetary constraints.
The declared commercial sensibility of this piece was undercut at several turns by some puerile pejoratives and gratuitous cheapshots, as well as a certain glibness about whether efficiency objectives actually follow from adversarial ideologically-driven pressures. I can accept the argument that the ABC’s programming can’t be regarded as inviolable, especially in the current climate. But it is another thing to just wave almost a hundred million in cuts as an inevitably positive agent for change without any consideration of substance.
Chalkie Kev, you’re right in confessing you “digress” but far worse is your digressions weren’t addressing the question of why you believe the A.B.C. [unlike many other Taxpayer entities] should be immune to cuts. Emotive outbursts such as the “prospective butchering of the ABC” “for reasons of politics and ideology” can help us feel noble, but aren’t especially effective with thinking undecided voters.
Will, although you at least acknowledge A.B.C. programmes could be considered for a financial cut, but your savage outbursts match his.
Might not less steam about the evil intents and more thoughtful arguments re which areas appear to be the ones where cuts commence be more productive?
I’m happy for each and every ABC program to be analysed to see if it is still fulfilling its purpose or could be improved, however let’s be clear about why this is happening. After promising that there would be no funding cuts to the ABC or SBS, the government is imposing a severe cut. They justify this on the basis of a confected “budget emergency” that (if it exists at all) they themselves made twice as bad. So at least let’s be honest about why this is being done: it’s got nothing to do with what’s happening with the BBC, and Dyer admits in the article that the BBC is not an analogous institution. It’s got nothing to do with a slew of ABC programming being generally recognised as being of poor quality or not meeting the charter requirements. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that some programs are inspired by similar programs elsewhere – an argument that falls completely flat if we start to look at commercial TV. This is about a government who simply doesn’t like the ABC: it doesn’t like the concept of public broadcasting or the way in which the ABC goes about it. Despite promising not to cut the funding, it is now doing that, and no organisation in the world can be expected to perform better with fewer resources. So it’s a slippery slope…
Chalkie Kev, I could be wrong, but I understand there hasn’t been an actual reduction in A.B.C. funding, but rather that they aren’t happy with the size of their allocation. Even though I’m a long-time Labor supporter, I have to concede that’s not at odds with normal analysis of what the Liberals’ words actually meant.
I’d be more than happy to suggest to the A.B.C. where to take funding variations, were I in such an influential position, and I’d suggest those who are in that position should set about it now rather than drumming up hysteria to support their empire.