ABC, “watery gruel”: Kim Williams
Foxtel CEO Kim Williams has said that the ABC’s expansion across wider delivery platforms and more channels will provide audiences with “a watery gruel” instead of “a meaty minestrone”.
“When the inevitable happens and funding contracts, the gruel will become Cuppa Soup,” Williams said.
William’s opinions were published today by The Punch; he has been openly critical of both the license fee rebate the Government has offered to commercial broadcasters, and the ABC’s multi-channel strategy with children’s channel ABC3 and its upcoming 24-hour news service.
“This is the real tragedy of the ABC’s grab for new territory, and it appears […] that ABC staff are worried about this too.”
Williams believes the expansion of the ABC is “to the detriment of the intellectual and creative life of our nation”, and that the broadcaster should spend “the $137m in extra funding it is getting from the Federal Government” on improving its content quality and scope instead.
In his editorial, Williams argues that the traditional broadcasting model forced the commercial networks to compete for the same audience, offering similar programming and ignoring other sections of the population. According to Williams, the ABC was able to offer different programming, but the executive’s praise did not extend to the present day, indicating that the public broadcaster’s content offering is in decline.
“Most noticeable has been the steady decline in the intellectual content of the ABC’s programming. Ironically the ABC shows much less Australian content than the commercial channels,” he said.
The Foxtel executive adds that [ABC director] Mark Scott’s “public and aggressive strategy of targeting and replicating the subscription television sector” is damaging existing quality television, because “Foxtel’s investment on “intellectual programming” such as news and documentaries is being “put at risk” by the ABC’s strategy.
“Why does Mark Scott want to waste the ABC’s once-in-a-lifetime level of public investment duplicating what already exists—when he could and should be leading a 21st-Century renaissance of Australian culture?” asked Williams.
The full editorial is available here.
