No bad decisions ever go away.
The ABC board met this week to sign off on the $84 million worth of cuts that the Morrison government slipped into last year’s budget to start from July 1 this year.
Expect cuts to programming and to jobs.
At the time of the budget, the cuts (imposed through a three-year freeze on the ABC’s funding) were dismissed as a self-indulgent slap at the public broadcaster (and a farewell gift to its ABC-hating News Corp supporters) by a dying government. The incoming Shorten Labor Government (remember that?) was expected to quickly overturn them.
ABC chair Ita Buttrose met with Morrison and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher this morning. The Australian helpfully speculated that she’s making “an impassioned plea” for more money, perhaps for the over-runs on bushfire coverage. But ABC insiders are playing it down.
The ABC seems stuck with the cuts — made worse by the blow-out in emergency broadcasts in this summer’s bushfires. The broadcaster topped the Nielsen ratings for digital news in January, both in unique visitors and in average time on site. But the costs of reporting teams on the ground and keeping regional and state-wide radio running over summer will have to be found somewhere.
Buttrose’s appointment by Morrison just 12 months ago was what’s come to be called a “captain’s pick” — Canberra bubble speak for “prime minister over-rules recommendation of expert committee in a #Scottyfrommarketing light-bulb moment”.
At the time, there was a bit of hopeful rumination that her contacts (including within perennial ABC critic News Corp) would act to ameliorate conservative hostility to the broadcaster.
Now, 12 months on, Morrison has been weakened and the hatred for the ABC from the resurgent right of the Liberal Party and their News Corp allies is stronger than ever. In both places, the ABC’s success in covering the bushfires actually counts against them, copping some of the blame for the fires putting climate action back on the agenda.
News Corp is annoyed by the ABC’s poaching of David Speers from Sky to present Insiders, and fuming at Paul Barry’s Media Watch critique of their climate change denialism (“full of journalistic deceit, misrepresentation and manipulation” says The Australian’s associate editor Chris Kenny).
The ABC tries to pacify News Corp (and the Liberal right) by programming their representatives onto television and radio talk panels, either as “balance” or as a pretence that News Corp is somehow just another normal news organisation. That can backfire, as Senator Jim Molan (“I’m not relying on evidence”) found on last week’s Q&A bushfire special.
There were mixed views within the ABC last November when Buttrose let it be known she was unimpressed with an all-women Q&A panel which was subsequently withdrawn from circulation after complaints about language and tone.
The ABC is said to have identified 200 jobs to go after bringing in external consultants. (About two-thirds of ABC expenditure is in salaries. As a rule of thumb, each ABC job can be estimated as costing an average $120,000 including on-costs). They’ll need to go before the end of June to meet next year’s budget.
Many of the jobs identified as surplus to requirements are thought to be in technical support, to be replaced by automation and by contracting out the work. But the bushfires have reinforced how important it is to have these resources within the corporation. That’s driving a rethink.
As always, the ABC is caught between thinning and axing — between slicing resources across the corporation and producing more or less the same with less, or closing programs and services outright.
It’s as much a political as an organisational decision: closing programs is more manageable for the organisation, but can be damaging politically, being read by the government as an attempt to bully them, as the ABC found in 2003 when its announced closures included school education program Behind the News.
While the ABC remains concerned about the influence the hostility of News Corp has over the government, things could be worse. In the UK, it’s been (probably mischievously) suggested that a Murdoch — Rupert’s daughter Elisabeth — could be appointed as the BBC’s new director general.
Nothing says cuts to the ABC like the reruns after reruns after reruns ad infinitum !!!!! You can’t listen to radio in particular without it’s something you heard yesterday or last week. TV is the same !! Shame on all the coalition governments – you should be giving them more … much more !!!
Technical support being cut? The ABC TV reception regularly cuts out on the NSW far south coast. Generally it comes on again after a few minutes but sometimes it doesn’t. On Monday, it cut out during Patricia Karvelas’s show on News24 and did not return quickly. After 90 minutes I rang the ABC, whose website says their technical dept answers the phone 8am to 8pm daily. After ringing for ages, the call went through to the switchboard. I explained the problem and was told nothing could be done until three complaints had been received. Cue my neighbours. Half an hour later I received a call from the technical dept asking me to switch to channel 2 and tell them when it came back on again. The woman tech person tried several somethings at her end and after about 30 seconds it was restored.
During the fires, we lost all TV and internet and power and were relying on ABC FM until it too disappeared. Commercial radio FM in Bega could still be heard until the ABC routed its broadcast through 603AM, whose reception was faint and loaded with static.
The ABC could well use some extra funding to avoid a repeat of what happened only 6 weeks ago.
If the likes of Chris Kenny accuses Media Watch of of journalistic deceit, misrepresentation and manipulation, aside from being very amusing, they’re on the right track.
dictatorship props up any opposition with media and thought control; these mugs who misrepresent our constitutional democracy are getting really scary … look at history ..:our forebears fought and laid down their lives for beautiful country to be sold off by this creeping dictatorship run by oligarchs