From: Graeme Thomson
Sent: Wednesday, 10 August 2011 3:07 PM
To: Mark Scott
Subject: Response to Managing Director's Message to all staff
ABC staff support you on many issues Mr Scott. They agree that that the ABC should deliver the best quality service to our listeners, viewers and readers. The problem is that when the best ideas reside within the ABC, you and your management team don’t give them a fair go.
When ABC program Makers say they want a chance to build programs, your Director of Television tells them they need to leave the ABC and pitch their ideas from outside.
Your message recommits to a mixed production model, but when we look at the schedule we see very few internal TV programs left. The dismantling of internal TV production capacity has demoralized staff to the lowest levels since the ABC commenced TV transmission in 1956.
By implication you suggest that those who are critical of your approach are resistant to change. You are wrong. ABC employees are ‘early adopters’, they embrace new ways of doing things, new technologies and accept the need to constantly assess whether their content is interesting and engaging. We have said that we want to be a part of the change.
The ABC must be relevant and cannot afford to stand still. We question however whether the ABC remains relevant to its audiences and to the taxpayers who fund it when the ABC is increasingly adopting the business model of the commercials ‐ focusing on ratings and its prime time audiences at the expense material that is distinctive from material broadcast on the commercials.
We fear that you have misread the frustration of staff when you present them with platitudes about how hard it is to end programs and to dismiss the hard working staff that produce them. Their frustration is not directed at the closure of programs, but at the failure of you and your management team to give them a fair chance to build replacement programs ‐ programs that would give innovators and scientists an opportunity to showcase their ideas, and programs that would provide new ways of presenting the Arts, and in particular the visual and performing arts to Australians.
We all recognise that the ABC must be efficient and cost effective in the delivery of its programs. Why then does the ABC commission programs from the private sector that could be produced more cheaply inside the ABC? Why has the ABC lavished funds on external productions while starving internal productions? Why has the ABC outsourced programs in South Australia and Western Australia that were previously made at a lower cost to the taxpayer?
You are reminded that the last external review of the ABC productions by the Productivity Commission revealed the ABC as a highly efficient and cost effective producer. Our call for an audit of the Dalton Model is aimed at testing these claims. The so called leverage that you have cited comes at a cost. That cost includes the loss of ownership of rights and the forfeiting of editorial control as commissioning decisions are dictated by resale arrangements.
You correctly state that many of the ABC’s most popular programs are made as co‐productions. In an environment where the ABC has denied internal producers an opportunity to build programs, and where you have already sacked award winning ABC documentary program makers, it comes as no surprise that the best funded, best promoted and best positioned programs are also the most popular. In sacrificing specialist and complementary programs in favour of higher rating programs, you endanger the very future of the ABC. Public support for the ABC rests on its distinctiveness.
It is important that you, Mr Dalton and private sector producers understand our position. We do not claim or even aspire to being the sole provider of ABC TV material. The ABC is at its best when it provides a mix of the best internal, external (i.e. mixed) and acquired programs.
ABC staff have repeatedly said they can imagine a better ABC. They want the opportunity to develop new ideas and programs in TV. But you are not listening. We repeat our call for your to personally address all staff about the future of ABC TV and whether they have a place within it.
Graeme Thomson on behalf of ABC staff
Graeme Thomson | ABC Section Secretary
