ABC boss says 50 jobs to go in first big change
The ABC’s new managing director has confirmed a number of sweeping operational changes at the national broadcaster, resulting in the loss of at least 50 jobs.
Former Nine boss Hugh Marks, who took over the top role at the ABC in March, informed staff of the changes on Wednesday afternoon, in an email seen by Mumbrella.
Marks noted “the need to focus our effort and resources on essential, core content and services” in the announcement. The changes “will result in around 40 redundancies and around 10 fixed contracts ending early,” he said.
The ABC’s content division will be renamed ABC Screen, and will include a newly created digital content department to “streamline digital and social content to align directly with our screen genres and commissioning process.” This department will be led by Jennifer Collins, current director of the content division.
The audio division will also be simplified, with the separation of the sport and capital city network teams, the integration of music programming into the ABC’s music networks, and the establishment of an ‘audio quality’ team, to bolster training for content makers.
The ‘social strategy’ team within ABC Audiences will also be dismantled, with its duties to be carried out by various teams within the strategy, marketing, and screen divisions.
ABC Chair Kim Williams and Hugh Marks
This news came on the same day ABC news chief Justin Stevens confirmed to staff that long-running current affairs show Q+A wouldn’t return. The show launched in 2008, and is currently on hiatus.
“We always need to keep innovating and renewing, and in the two decades since Q+A began the world has changed,” Stevens wrote in a separate note to staff. “It’s time to rethink how audiences want to interact and to evolve how we can engage with the public to include as many Australians as possible”.
Marks said news budget will instead be allocated to producing additional “high-impact premium news documentary programs” and making the public feedback initiative ‘Your Say’ a permanent fixture. He later told ABC Radio Melbourne of plans to “bring back one very famous format from some years ago”, hinting “it was very popular.”
He told staff the changes were in order to best serve the Australian public.
“We must produce journalism, video and audio that has real and meaningful impact for Australians,” Marks wrote. “We want to be bold with our content ambitions and seek to over-achieve creatively. We have to keep investing and seeking to offer more to our audiences. And we need the capacity to trial new formats for news, screen and audio.
“Achieving this means making strategic and sometimes difficult choices about where we invest and when to step back from areas that no longer align with our priorities.”
He said the savings will be “reinvested directly into more content and services for audiences”.
“The objective is to enhance our TV slate in volume and ambition, increase our capacity to commission more high value journalism, enable more original podcasting and put targeted resources into our metropolitan audio teams,” he said.
Q+A was axed as part of the ABC cuts
Erin Madeley, chief of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, the union that represents hundreds of ABC staffers, issued a statement blaming mismanagement for undermining the ABC’s mandate.
“Management is driving instability through a flawed commercial model which simply doesn’t fit with the public interest test,” she said.
“Mismanagement of the ABC and its budget has led to cuts to jobs, public interest reporting and programming with workers wearing the risk and pain.”
Madeley also hit out at the axing of Q+A, saying the show played “a critical and unique role in our democracy, where the public can speak to politicians on a national stage.”
“We are seeing an ongoing drive towards insecure jobs at the ABC, which also impacts staff retention and the ABC’s ability to function the way the public needs.”
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Got a tip?
Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
Linkedin
Have your say