Kim Williams was correct: Shift from lifestyle sees ABC News become Australia’s most-read site
New chair Kim Williams’ public criticism of the ABC’s online news focus has clearly hit home, as the broadcaster’s renewed focus on hard news has seen it overtake news.com.au as the country’s most-read news site.
Williams blasted the ABC’s online news offering during a candid staff meeting in July, where he noted that news stories such as Gaza strikes and NATO meetings were overlooked in favour of fluffy lifestyle stories, which were also given prominent placement on the ABC News frontpage.
“The ABC’s primary obligations are obviously to what might be regarded as serious news and commentary and to things that reflect a plurality of serious aspirations on the part of the community, or things that are in mainstream entertainment,” Williams told the Guardian after his fiery diatribe was reported by the Nine papers.
This renewed focus (plus a canny rebrand that recalls the glory years of the national broadcaster) has seen ABC News overtake news.com.au as the country’s most-read news website, with ABC News pulling a monthly audience of 11.83 million in September, compared with news.com.au’s 11.79 million.
Interestingly, both sites have dropped by roughly 4% — August saw news.com.au just 10,000 monthly readers ahead of ABC News — both of which were modest drops compared to the rest of the pack.
Nine.com.au reached 9.16 million readers, a 13% fall, while 7News.com.au also fell 13%, to 8.08 million.
Daily Mail took a 14% tumble, to 8.024, while the Sydney Morning Herald rose 7%, to 7.55 million, arresting a 3% fall from August.
Interestingly — or perhaps obviously given the month — the AFL’s news website was read by 3.43 million Australians, a 32% climb, and enough to place it in the Top 10 news sites, less than 200,000 readers away from Nine’s Melbourne paper, The Age.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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He’s still wrong. The ABC Charter specifically requires entertainment.
“broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community;”
And also missing the point where the lifestyle content is trying to reach audiences who aren’t coming for the “serious news”. The ABC doesn’t need to please advertisers with shonky metrics (as measured by IAB and Ipsos) but instead needs to reach all Australians.
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Sorry Rob, can’t agree with you, with commercial TV, Newspaper and Radio in total management decline or in overseas ownership. We need a balanced National Broadcaster to step up to the plate.
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Simon, yes the ABC is required to provide entertainment. But at no time or stage that the ABC News required entertainment. You are WAYYYYYYYY off.
Hugh, the most recent research had SBS at 65% and ABC at 64%. In a survey of N=2,000 is not statistical significant, but it does shadow the 2021 data when it was ABC 70% and SBS 69%. The drop in the data is because of streaming – again, not significant.
Rob, education is not a waste of money. and Williams is on to it already.
Trash, I think you are close to the money. The viewers don’t want to see the commercial rubbish, and
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Most trusted. What a load of rot. Anyone that believes that is living in lala land. ABC in all its forms or platforms is the least trusted. Lefty woke garbage run by useless inexperienced uni drop outs. Abc should be shut down. Abc the most trusted. Yea right.
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I have not seen any statistics which say anything like “the ABC is the most trusted news source”. Quite the opposite. How could this have been reversed in a few week?
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I don’t partake of ANY ABC programming, on-line, Free to air or now even ABC regional radio and certainly not metropolitan. The ABC presents the Socialist/Marxist viewpoint on anything in the news, lifestyle and especially politics in its programming. It is now so biased it is unwatchable and unlistenable. The presenters are to a person left-biased activist journalists who don’t even bother to hide their bias as also to a person they rightly think they are untouchable. Time for the management to take back control Kim because if you don’t and soon the ABC will be defunded or privatised.
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Letting Kim Williams go might be the biggest mistake News Corp has made in the last decade, which is really saying something given the string of mistakes they’ve made during that time.
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The ABC’s website is more difficult to navigate than ever – so imagine if it was readable (like it used to be!)
The other missing link in this story is that Facebook is caning Nine, Seven and the Daily Mail, who all benefited a lot from it.
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Sorry chaps it’s a waste of money ? no longer required ?
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The previous chair uses to run tabloid style trash mags right? ‘Lifestyle’….
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