Is this the beginning of the end of the ABC as we know it?
While the ABC cuts have focussed around traditional delivery mechanisms the investment in digital technology shapes the broadcaster for the future argue Brian McNair and Adam Swift in this cross-posting from The Conversation.
While Australia’s elected representatives argue over what then-opposition leader Tony Abbott meant when he promised “no cuts to the ABC, or SBS” the night before the last election, directly to the electorate, while advertising himself as a leader who could be trusted not to break his promises, the cuts are in and the announcements of what form they will take at the ABC have been made.
Most had been heavily trailed last week, but now we know for sure that some 400 jobs will go because of these cuts. Regional facilities will be closed, services and programs will be cancelled or, in Lateline’s case, moved to ABC News 24. ABC websites will be rationalised, with 100 or so earmarked for the chop. State-based sports broadcasting will go, along with the state editions of 7.30.
It’s a catastrophe for those ABC employees whose jobs are in the firing line. They will now prepare to join the ranks of the thousands let go by the commercial media in the last three years. Some will be redeployed, Scott assures his staff. Nonetheless, 10% is a big chunk of the workforce. Even if the emphasis will be on what are implied to be less-than-essential management and administration posts – in an attempt to limit the damage to content while responding to government claims that the ABC is flabby and inefficient – this is a major loss of human resources.
But the ABC is bigger than its individual employees, and job cuts in themselves are sometimes necessary for the longer-term sustainability of such institutions. No sector, public service media included, is exempt from those processes.
After all the speculation of recent months and weeks, then, after the leaks and the speeches, the lobbying by supporters and opponents of public service media and the pressures from government, where does this leave the ABC? Are we seeing a necessary step in the digitally driven rationalisation of a 20th-century analogue monster, necessary to make it fit for purpose in the 21st? Or is this the beginning of the end of the ABC as we know it?
To listen to ABC managing director Mark Scott as he defended his decisions, there’s little doubt that he wants Australians to see these cuts and the changes they force on the ABC as the former – painful adjustments to changing realities, but in the end good for the public service patient.
The ABC has successfully moved into 24-hour news and content streaming, Scott stresses, through ABC News 24 and iView – two developments which he is clearly very proud of and determined to build on. The future is online, and in real time, interactive and participatory, and it is bright. To signal the direction of change, the ABC will create a “Digital Network Division”.
With this strategy, Scott is following the template established by the BBC when faced with similar financial pressures in the last decade. This is to go on the offensive, resist the private competitors who dispute your right to play the online and 24-hour news game, and confirm without apology that your public service remit extends to the digital platforms increasingly used by Australian audiences for their TV and radio consumption.
Play to the ABC’s popularity, in other words, and to the rise of a demographic for whom mobile platforms are more and more important as a source of news, information, entertainment and every other form of content. The ABC should be about cutting-edge digital innovation if it is to retain its place at the heart of Australia’s cultural life.
In all of this, Scott is articulating the only viable strategy for all public service media organisations – no retreat to the cultural ghetto demanded by the big private interests and their supporters in the News Corp media, but in the avant garde of digital innovation, harnessing its vast potential for public good.
But if digital is the big winner in this round of cuts and restructuring, the big loser would appear to be the ABC’s regional infrastructure. Radio services are being closed in five locations. TV production in Adelaide (though not news and current affairs) is being wound down. The state editions of 7.30 will be replaced by a national current affairs magazine show in the same slot.
The impression given is of a substantial thinning out of the rural and regional editorial resource base, and a creeping metro-centralism as more and more production is concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne.
On the other hand, a new Regional Division is promised. This body, importantly led by someone who doesn’t live in Sydney, will play a strategic role in co-ordinating regional resources to improve coverage and content. As such, it is argued that the closure of a radio station in Nowra – or the axing of Radio National’s Bush Telegraph – is less important than the establishment of a new strategic approach which harnesses the power of digital technology to better serve the vast and sparsely populated Australian continent.
This is a risky approach. It has already generated fierce criticism from those who fear any change as the thin end of an ideologically shaped wedge. Cutting state sports coverage is also going to be unpopular.
However, Scott insists that these and other cuts will not damage the ABC’s capacity to fulfil its public service remit, within which the provision of quality regional and rural news and current affairs is a core element. Programs and schedules evolve all the time, for many reasons other than financial. Scott seems genuinely to believe that the democratising, decentralising, participatory potentials of digital tools will strengthen rural and regional services rather than undermine them.
In the end, and with an anti-ABC government in charge, Australians who value public service have little choice but to trust Scott, whose personal and professional commitment to the public service media ethos is real.
Having been confronted with a hostile government on the attack, Scott now faces his final challenge as managing director – to lead the ABC through implementation of these cuts in such a way that his positive vision of the future of Australian public service media is realised.
Brian McNair is professor of journalism at Queensland University of Technology and Adam Swift is senior research associate at Queensland University of Technology
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.
What a terribly silly column. Scott is clearly doing what is bleeding obvious. What he has not done is use this situation to create something.
Scott makes no attempt to sell change, not even the new money put into digital and a new regional news structure, both of which are presumably innovative.
Put simply, today’s technology demands reduction in production staff. That is simply the nature of the contemporary technologies in news media and digital media more generally. Offices are not essential either. Nor are layers of admin.
Scott had ample room here to makeover the ABC creatively. Instead he played the game of his critics.
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Seriously Huh?, another Liberal Party stooge comment?
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There’s always another option – run paid advertisements! Stacks of cash and they can do what they want.
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Only the deeply stupid will celebrate the emasculation of the ABC, the weakening of an independent non commercial broadcaster, the diminished contribution to music and culture. Sure the ABC needed to improve its efficiency but the Governments aim is to render it powerless and as a result the intellectual capital of the country will be lessened and we will end up with too many dumbed down thinkers like @Huh, and @Jennifer who has posted on other items on the ABC.
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It’s all very well for Mark Scott to push the ABC towards a stronger Digital presence but if you can’t afford to make decent content then what is the point?
The ABC’s strength is in news / current affairs so it makes no sense to be reducing expenditure on these programs e.g.. 4 Corners, Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and Australian Story.
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@Groucho: I agree with the sentiment. It’s just that I think it’s Mark Scott and others in influence who are dumbing down the ABC.
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Funny how we all bemoan the loss of local services like the ABC – but we aren’t prepared to pay for them.
Mumbrella represents a great community of media professionals, from journalists to advertising executives.
But often we fail to make the symbiotic link between the two.
Big Splash runs a community newspaper, proudly supported by a local council who sees the advantage of keeping its community informed through professional journalists and great content. And some very loyal and welcome small businesses.
Our area is slated for amalgamation (get rid of the local identity and voice – so much easier to put through unpopular policies) and has just just been told to find 16,200 new homes. You’d think a local voice would be pretty important, particularly since there are at least six “community consultation” exercises going on right now.
Local is good. And making communities feel valued is a strong advertising proposition.
YET advertising dollars from people like American Express professing to support local business – “shop small!” – are only spent on TV and in Metros. Community newspaper or website? Too difficult to evaluate. Sorry.
Banks profess to love small business. IAG says it’s the way the locals like it.
So do they really support small business? Sorry, no.
The Metro buy is so much easier that trying to value community websites and newspapers. And there is not a lot of commissions in a local buy!
Mark Scott was softened up with a Government-led campaign claiming the ABC was full of fat cats spending up big. Now he’s making the cuts, he’s murdering the ABC and local voices. He is actually uniquely qualified to steer the national broadcaster through the current environment, and we’re lucky he is in charge.
We’re all responsible for throttling community voices, including the ABC’s local services. Fairfax, News, advertisers (yes, they have a role!). Even, to some extent, the communities themselves.
When you deal at a micro level, as we do, and see local communities trying to find solutions to real local issues, you know what it means when they loose their voice.
Pretty soon, there won’t be a print version of the Sydney Morning Herald or the Age. Let’s hope media buyers can spend some time looking at how they can create a new network of real local voices, so their clients get the reach they deserve for their campaigns professing to care for communities.
Sadly, it won’t help the ABC. But it might help support communities who care for what is going on around them.
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ABC management, deciding the budget allocation have chosen upsetting their audiences rather than sacking the layers of unnecessary management and admin that the corporation groans under.
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Why’s that Huh? Did you land one of the 70 digital jobs there?
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JG: Interesting assumption JG. Answer: nope.
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As an old fart, I’ve lived through several iterations of Libs Vs ABC. It used to be that incumbent Lib Governments meant the Exec Producer of Four Corners or This Day Tonight would somehow get sacked just before elections.
But you know what? We all gave up piano lessons, thinking we were very smart.
Kids don’t do homework nor study, thinking they’re very smart.
Fat people don’t go to gyms, thinking they’re very smart.
The streets where I live are full of addicts and drunkards, all thinking they’re very smart.
The point is: things that are good for us, are of benefit to us, (such as study, temperance, exercise…) are not always the easy way, the lazy way or the slack way. It’s not always comfortable.
Sometimes GOOD THINGS require effort.
Perhaps Governments who feel aggrieved by ABC reports of their activities could consider behaving better. No?
(or is that an “on-water operation”?)
Certainly the ABC of the future won’t have to bother with stories on ethics, ecology, climate change, literature or feminism. There won’t BE any.
But at least *I’m* learning. Tomorrow I won’t have said this – or if I have it wasn’t what I meant – and if it was what I meant it was only because I’m battling the disastrous legacy of my predecesser – and if none of that works, it is the work of the Media.
Bloody word-twisting Media. (except News Corp and Adelaide Advertiser)!!!
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