ABC Life’s ‘rebrand’ is a loss; it published pieces that would never find homes with its commercial critics
The public broadcaster's lifestyle platform was one of the biggest casualties of this week's Five-Year Plan, which involves up to 250 redundancies. But Mumbrella's Brittney Rigby argues that ABC Life's axing is a reminder of the flimsy criticism commercial outlets levelled at it, even before it launched.
ABC Life was axed this week. The decision was euphemistically described as a ‘rebrand’ to ABC Local, but the two products are very different; ABC Local will focus on suburban and regional news and, in effect, the public broadcaster will no longer have a dedicated lifestyle offering.
This was one of the worst cuts handed down in the ABC’s long-awaited Five-Year Plan. Managing director David Anderson and the board had a difficult job: meeting an $84m budget shortfall, and deciding which people – up to 250 of them – would lose their jobs.
But disbanding a team that punched above its weight and published meaningful content is short-sighted. And its absence will be felt keenly by a young audience that has already lost digital titles like Buzzfeed News, 10 Daily, Whimn, and basically Vice (which is left with one writer and one editor).
News Corp led a dogged (and, I suppose, successful) campaign against ABC Life, backed by fellow commercial outlets apparently threatened by a team that didn’t compete for ad revenue. The Australian was particularly vocal about its distaste for the two-year-old site, which has been led by editor Bhakthi Puvanenthiran since last August.
https://twitter.com/bhakthi/status/1275615056793722881
“Without ABC Life – who would have known how to cook chickpeas in rich tomato sauce? Worth $3 million on its own, to be sure,” Gerard Henderson wrote.
There was a lot of emphasis on its budget of $3m a year, despite this being just 0.34% of the ABC’s total 2019/2020 budget of $879m. Anonymous columnist “The Mocker” dismissed nuanced stories on the emotional labour involved in occupations like hairdressing, and the class and racial history of nail art – “Commenting on nails is racist now?” – among others.
“If someone could point to that part of the ABC statutory charter that says the organisation must incessantly self-flagellate and berate concerning matters relating to race, climate and gender, I would appreciate it,” The Mocker wrote.
“Basically if your writing is along the lines of giving voice to the so-called marginalised, or if you believe anything that white people say or do is racist, or if you are convinced there is a patriarchy hellbent on subordinating women, ABC Life is your outlet.”
And then, unsurprisingly, there was Chris Kenny, who added: “Apparently, Life tells us, only one in every four women is masturbating regularly, and our national broadcaster has hang-ups about that. ‘Blame the patriarchy … and religion’, it wanks on.”
It’s predictable and boring to scoff at stories written for young people on sex, food, travel, money, work and relationships. And why is lifestyle content – often written by women for women, like the above-mentioned story about the gendered masturbation gap – so often belittled?
But The Australian wasn’t alone. The criticism was loud and clear (and commercial), even before ABC Life launched.
Fairfax (before its merger with Nine) said it was “not needed”, Junkee said the lifestyle space is “well serviced by the existing commercial publishers”, and News Media Works’ Peter Miller said the offering could “suck the oxygen” from other players. The commercial TV networks, represented by Free TV’s Bridget Fair, agreed. Fair said at the time: “Lifestyle would have to be one of the most comprehensively covered market segments in Australian media. It’s very hard to see how this new service fits with the ABC charter.”
And the charter argument is flimsy anyway. The charter is broad and mandates, among other things, “broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community”.
Scott Spark, who helped create ABC Life, told Mumbrella last year: “When it comes to the charter and how it really speaks to Life, there are some key things there that I would draw on. One of them is around reflecting Australia’s cultural diversity, innovating our content and providing independent media services.”
As for the lifestyle space already being “well serviced” by commercial outfits, part of ABC Life’s appeal, and success, is content unlike anything consumers would find housed elsewhere: talking to kids about racism, living with chronic pain, salary transparency, and what not to say to someone dealing with infertility. ABC Life has also published pieces that deal sensitively with recovering from mental illness, giving up alcohol, coping with unemployment, and navigating a relationship in which a partner experiences pain during sex – all without trying to sell anything.
Spark was with ABC Life since its inception, before stepping into a new role at the ABC in April
Image: Juliet Steen
And its COVID-19 coverage has been something different to, but just as important as, Aunty’s hard news reporting: Your legal rights if your employer cuts your hours under Job Keeper, helping older people feeling lonely in isolation, the impact lockdown has had on people with eating disorders, and how a homeless person can’t heed a ‘stay at home’ direction when they don’t have one.
All of these stories deserve to be told by the public broadcaster, because they reflect the diversity of the Australian community, inform, entertain, and contribute to a more accurate sense of our national identity. Just like the charter says.
Chair Ita Buttrose said on Wednesday: “The ABC Five-Year Plan is a robust blueprint for the future of the ABC that emphasises the important role the ABC plays in the Australian way of life.”
That’s the exact role the aptly-named ABC Life played. And its team deserved a longer and easier run than it got, no thanks to the competitors whose revenue woes will persist, even now they’ve gotten their way.
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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Reading this I feel a bit like I’ve wandered into the Guardian rather than Mumbrella…
Brittney this is a strong representation of the ABC editorial perspective but the wider commercial view (something Mumbrella should care about) isn’t adequately explored. It’s wrong to say that the arguments of the commercial players were “filmsy” – they are built on the fact that lifestyle was a valuable but overcrowded sector that didn’t need the ABC entering/distorting it (no matter how worthy the content might have been).
ABC Life might not have competed for ad revenue but it was well funded and competed for eyeballs without the need to worry about revenues or a sustainable business model – thus it significantly distorts what is already a broken market.
Now its not the ABC’s fault that the market is broken but nor is it the commercial players.
Google and Facebook have destroyed the digital CPMs, publishers were desperate for areas of growth where brands would still pay a premium CPM and lifestyle was definitely one. This should be acknowledged as its important part of what we’ve seen in recent weeks. A reckoning was always coming (vale Buzzfeed, 10 Daily et al) but the ABC entering a crowded space was always going to draw their rivals ire and rightly so – we’ve also seen it before in the fact checking market – the ABC Fact Check service entered the space already crowded with Politifact and The Conversation and it made it hard for any of them to cut through, ultimately the commercial player Politifact died.
The editorial product was strong (as it should be with a big budget and no commercial priorities) but everyone in media has limited resources – the real question is where should the ABC be focusing – and lifestyle isn’t an area that should be prioritized over news, documentaries and other areas. Something management has acknowledged this week.
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… the biggest critics of ABC Life were people who call themselves journalists from both within and outside the organisation who have the misconception that the ABC should be a “news organisation” rather than what the Charter expects of it …
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One easy way to prove this (and argue for the reinstatement) is to track some of the issues and target markets (like young people) covered against coverage of the other (commercial) lifestyle media. For a brief period in the 90s, UK Guardian dropped its famed women’s page and the BBC flirted with dropping Women’s Hour. But the evidence was that without those sections/programmes, the issues mentioned simply didn’t get coverage. For some funny reason the (at the time) mostly male editors simply didn’t think the topics were important … Women’s Hour (which actually has a significant male audience) and the Women’s Page survived/returned. At the point where that happens it becomes easy to see how it fits with the charter.
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Going to go counter to some opinions and suggest that ABC Local makes a lot more sense than ABC Life, especially as other media are reducing local/community content. It’s clearly crunch time at the ABC when it comes to the broadcast’s budget, but it’s also crunch time at most other businesses around Australia, and in many homes too, due to the rolling impact of the coronavirus.
No, I am not conflating the Covid-recession with the Govt’s slashing of Aunty’s budget. But what I am saying is that at times like this it’s wise to pretty much go back to basics, back to the core of your business or the essentials of your home life, and start afresh. In some ways, instead of starting with what you have and thinking “What can I cut?” you go back to a clean sheet of paper, ask “What’s the most important things to have?” and build up from there.
This is where the ABC is right now, or if not, then that should be its thinking. And there’s clearly no place in mid-2020 thinking for a Buzzfeed-style site for ‘yoof appeal’ if it comes at the expense of the ABC’s core charter. Local news is a far more integral part of the ABC, and it’s also where the ABC can strut its stuff, stand out and prove its worth as a unique channel, rather than being caught up in competing with other lifestyle sites.
I’m sure ABC Life published many worthy pieces, as this article suggests, but that alone is not sufficient justification in times like this, and a year from now I am sure that the many communities served by ABC Local will agree.
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ABC Life was such a flagrant, practically ostentatious, waste of public money that in the end even the ABC found it indefensible. Is there any folly that cannot attract support in the name of “attracting a younger audience”? And what an insult to the young!
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$3m per year is nearly 100 people working full time from home on $30k year, or 50 working on $60k. That sort of human capital can produce a lot of high value content on any worthy subject.
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