By any measure, 2018 has been exceptionally bad for the ABC. And that’s even without the extraordinary sacking of Michelle Guthrie, Justin Milne quitting and the subsequent public tit-for-tat. Some of the ABC’s misfortune has been forced upon it — the budget cuts, the political attacks — but the broadcaster has not made it easy for itself, with its own share of self-inflicted wounds to deal with.
General internal messes
The big one, of course, was the sacking of managing director Michelle Guthrie in September. It was just the first bombshell in a series of revelations and allegations about Guthrie and ABC chair Justin Milne. Guthrie has since announced she’s suing the ABC for unfair dismissal, the Senate launched an inquiry into allegations of political interference, and each were interviewed in an unedifying display for the ABC’s Four Corners.
Guthrie’s sacking followed an already-tumultuous year for staff. A staff engagement survey conducted last year was released, showing staff were increasingly unhappy with management. Attempts to offset this with staff awards for displaying ABC values, featuring the character “Larry”, were ridiculed.
External pressure
The ABC has been under increasing political pressure this year — an exceptional number of complaints were lodged by the government about editorial matters, and attacks in and out of parliament by politicians have continued. Inquiries into the broadcaster have also continued — a (recently released) competitive neutrality inquiry by the ACCC found the ABC and SBS were abiding by their charters, an efficiency review will be run by ex-News Corp executive Peter Tonagh, and the Senate is looking into political bias and the Guthrie-Milne events.
The efficiency review was announced in the May budget along with surprise cuts of $84 million.
Program cuts
The most high-profile cuts to the ABC’s programming schedule this year were in television. Comedy program Tonightly, promoted as the headline act of the digital comedy channel, was axed after two short seasons to make way for “something fresh”, according to the press release. That decision in October came months after the decision not to commission another season of The Checkout (“it’s not axed, it’s just on hiatus!” ABC spinners insisted).
More quietly, radio programmers halved the airtime for two of the ABC’s current affairs programs at the end of last year: The World Today and PM. This year, the programs have been running for 30 minutes each — a new format that will continue into the next year.
Redundancies and restructures
As part of the broadcaster’s “digital transformation”, 20 senior editorial jobs were cut to make way for new roles just before the budget was announced. Even earlier in the year, redundancies in sound libraries and other technology divisions were quietly occurring across the country as archives were digitised.
Cock-ups
2018 also saw an exceptional number of plain old errors of judgement at the ABC, both real and confected, despite increased efforts by the communications department to spin positive stories and defend the organisation.
Economics correspondent Emma Alberici is a constant presence in criticism of the ABC’s “bias”, after her company tax articles were published (and removed) in February. That controversy followed the “cabinet files” debacle, where filing cabinets with secret documents were handed back to the government, and the broadcaster was forced to apologise to former prime minister Kevin Rudd about one of the resulting stories. That debacle alone was described to Crikey at the time as, “The worst couple of weeks in the ABC’s modern era”.
There was one win and one loss for the ABC with the regulator — ACMA cleared the ABC of breaching language standards with Tonightly’s Batman sketch which used the word “cunt”, but found a breach of impartiality rules by political editor Andrew Probyn in describing former prime minister Tony Abbott as the most destructive politician of his generation.
The ABC was widely criticised for inviting barrister Charles Waterstreet — then accused of inappropriate behaviour by an intern — as a panellist on a special Q&A about the Me Too movement, and separately of having nationalist and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon as a guest both on Four Corners and then again in news stories just weeks later.
Technology failures mired beloved Melbourne newsreader Ian Henderson’s last broadcast, while Melbourne radio broadcaster Jon Faine continued to cover himself in glory with insensitive comments when interviewing disability advocate and author Carly Findlay and was found to have breached ABC standards with racial comments about NBN technicians.
Meanwhile, senior journalist Peter Lloyd is still on leave after outtakes from an interview from PM with Malcolm Turnbull’s son Alex were leaked to the Australian Financial Review (which Lloyd denies doing).
Here at Crikey, we hope the ABC can put its annus horribilis behind it for a 2019 where the stories the ABC tells get more attention than what is going on behind the scenes.
You forgot to mention the continuing fall in regional radio ratings since the long-serving Regional Content Managers (who were also mainly the breakfast presenters) were made redundant and replaced with Chiefs of Staff (positions largely filled by ex-newspaper journalists with zero experience in broadcasting) to lead a “team of journalists” with a remit to change to a “news focussed” format that instead of actually engaging with the local audience, seeks to “identify local content that could travel to other content areas across the ABC”. The result? The latest surveys show a decrease in ABC breakfast audiences that in some cases are now half those that existed before. This was Mark Scott’s last gift to the ABC. As for the technical glitches, when you get rid of virtually everyone in the organisation that actually understands the workings of “broadcasting” and replace them with so-called “journalists”, what do you expect?
Comedy program Tonightly, … was axed … in October .. months after the decision not to commission another season of The Checkout (“it’s not axed, it’s just on hiatus!” ABC spinners insisted).
Watched Tonightly regularly. Found Tom Ballard usually unfunny but Bridie Connell and Greta Lee Jackson were often hilarious.
And I thought The Checkout was great and would like to see it revived in 2019.
I was very disappointed when the ABC axed “The Book Club”. Enjoyed by many, including my daughter’s generation, I really don’t think 30 minutes per week is too much to expect (at 9.30 pm) for those of us who greatly enjoyed the program. Also, it must have been very cheap to produce.
Ok, but Albericis column was right, and Andrew Probyn was correct in his description of Abbott. Neither was bad for the ABC. In years gone by they would have handled the criticism better, returning fire. Now they supinely bend over.
Fair dinkum!! You’ve failed to mention the most egregious failures of all.
1. Sarah Ferguson’s lickspittle 4C interview with H. Clinton – beyond cringeworthy, truly appalling.
2. Sales similarly spineless interview with Comey. Do people even understand just how conflicted Comey was, and is? For Pete’s sake, his brother is a principal at the DLA Piper crowd that the Clinton Foundation got to perform their ‘audits’, when DLA Piper were already big donors to both the foundation, and H. Clinton’s political career.
3. Sophie McNeill’s disgraceful advocacy for the “White Helmets” in Syria. How many goddamn pictures of White Helmets participating in horrendous human rights abuses, right up to ‘celebrating’ the beheading of a child, on camera, does it take for even a modicum of journalistic skepticism to surface.
4. The complete and utter failure to report on the key role played by both the Australian government, and former Australian ADF personnel (and that’s a ‘war business’ link right there), with the UAE, via MBZ – MBS’s ‘puppet master’, and their running of the vicious war crime fandango in Yemen.
Although, Thursday of last week, the ABC’s 7.30 did run a story on it, a snapshot of what is to come, as the 85% of the world that is not part of the ‘Western civilisation’ that brought them the ‘international rules based order’ begins to wake up to the fact they are the victims of a centuries long war waged on their civilisations.
It’s happening NOW – the development of a multi polar world, led by those arch enemies of the West, the previously much slaughtered and exploited, Russians and Chinese.
And, it’s irreversible.
P.S. I’ve told Boss@Crikey numerous times about Oz involvement in the UAE, and how that involvement constitutes provable war crimes, buttressed by oodles of evidence – from genuinely independent media, and even French law firms submissions to the ICC (as reported by Murdoch’s Australian a month or so back), and not even the courtesy of a response.
Endless email pleas to ‘support the survival of independent Oz media’, and ‘quality journalism’ make me f’ing laugh.
And, just for a kicker, if anyone is interested to learn from the greatest diplomat of the last 50 years (kudos to Chou En Lai, but this bloke bests him), this is a transcript of a recent radio interview with the great, great Sergey Lavrov. The man is a giant.
https://thesaker.is/lavrovs-interview-with-radio-komsomolskaya-pravda/
Yeah, it’ll be sent off to ‘moderation’, as per freakin’ usual. And, people here will be the poorer for not being given the chance to read the words of a true master of the craft of international diplomacy.