The Australian - 10 October 2011
THE ABC is paying The Chaser team $1.2 million for the eight-part series The Hamster Wheel, as well as footing the bill for most of the production costs, according to leaked documents. The comedy series, which launched last week, is produced by The Chaser's own production company Giant Dwarf in association with ABC TV.
The total cost of the co-production is $3.2m, which makes it one of the most expensive shows on the ABC, at $400,000 per half-hour episode.
In contrast, internally produced programs the ABC recently axed, The Collectors and Talking Heads, cost just $122,000 and $53,460 per half-hour episode, respectively.
The leaked figures are a revealing insight into the way the outsourced and co-production model works and comes as the Senate finalises its report on ABC outsourcing, due on Wednesday.
The inquiry has brought the relative costs of programming into sharp focus, and forced the public broadcaster to reveal the cost of sport, arts and other programs.
ABC managing director Mark Scott told the committee the magazine arts program Art Nation was axed because it cost $2 million a year to put to air but only got 60,000 viewers.
"No disrespect to the work that they were doing, but we need to make a call in a world of finite resources about where money is best invested," Mr Scott said. It may not be worth spending more than $10m on sport if the audiences were getting smaller, he said.
Based on figures heard at the Senate inquiry, The Hamster Wheel is almost twice the cost of a quality drama like Screentime's Crownies, which senators were told cost $10m for 22 one-hour episodes.
The $1.2m payment to The Chaser is significant because the ABC is using its own facilities -- including studios, labour and editing suites -- to produce The Hamster Wheel, at an additional cost to the TV budget of about $2m.
The Hamster Wheel, which premiered on Wednesday to an average audience of 857,000, is a slick half-hour news-analysis show that costs the ABC $400,000 each episode.
The ABC spends about $250,000 using its facilities, including camera operators, studio costs and publicity for each 30-minute episode and pays an additional "cash" fee of $150,000 to Giant Dwarf.
Sources said the Senate communications committee has twice asked the ABC board to give evidence in camera before it finalises its report, but the board has declined. Committee sources said the senators wanted to hear from the board as well as Mr Scott, who has already given public evidence at the one-day hearing.
The Senate committee is examining the implications of outsourcing, including whether the ABC gets value for money from producers who sell them their creative ideas.
Mr Scott and his director of television, Kim Dalton, argued that the mixed model of internal production, co-production and outsourced production was working well but Mr Scott also acknowledged that some shows were expensive.
"I think it is fair to say that some of the hours that we are spending with the independent production are very expensive hours of television," Mr Scott told the committee. "Some of our more successful talent, like The Chaser and Chris Lilley and others, are expensive, and prime time is more expensive.
There are five directors of Giant Dwarf Productions -- Julian Morrow, Chas Licciardello, Dominic Knight, Chris Taylor and Andrew Hansen -- commonly referred to as the "Chaser Boys".
The ABC declined to comment, but Morrow, executive producer of The Hamster Wheel, said any fee paid by the ABC to Giant Dwarf did not go straight into the pockets of The Chaser. The company employed producers, directors and researchers. "We also work with ABC researchers, production managers and production staff," Morrow said. "ABC publicity does all the publicity and marketing."
The team had worked since February developing the show, while the ABC's costs kicked in just seven weeks ago, he said.
After 10 years of making shows for the ABC, Morrow represented the independent sector in public hearings in Canberra last month. Speaking on behalf of a group of producers including Andrew Denton and Anita Jacoby from Zapruder's Other Films and Chris Lilley's Princess Pictures, he argued that their programs -- including The Gruen Transfer, Angry Boys and Hungry Beast -- were among the most popular on the ABC and were perceived as "ABC programs".
Morrow said working with external production companies was essential if the ABC was to remain an innovative public broadcaster of quality programming.
"It is important for the committee to understand that as independent producers we bring projects to the ABC because we believe in public broadcasting and the program-making values that go with public broadcasting," he said.
In his evidence, Mr Scott agreed with Morrow.
"If you asked (audiences) whether Andrew Denton or The Chaser or Chris Lilley or the Ita Buttrose (Paper Giants) drama we did were internal or external or co-funded or acquired, they would not know. They just know it is an ABC program."
In his evidence, Community and Public Sector Union ABC section secretary Graeme Thomson called for an external audit of the ABC's commissioning process. "Programs are brought in without any competitive tendering," he said. "Significant amounts of money are being outsourced."
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WHEN ABC TV chief Kim Dalton chose to trim his production budget by ending some off-Broadway programs, such as lawn bowls, state football matches and a largely-unwatched arts magazine show, he couldn't have predicted the backlash. As unfashionable as local sport is, and as low-rating as arts programming is, news of their demise at the public broadcaster caused a lot of anger among sporting bodies, the arts communities, local politicians and the ABC unions -- and ended up before a parliamentary inquiry.
Now Dalton and ABC managing director Mark Scott are facing the possibility of an audit of all their programming decisions and TV budget, as well as the imposition of a quota system to determine how much of the slate can be produced externally.
These are some of the recommendations that may be handed down by the Senate committee, which was forced by independent senator Nick Xenophon after a number of programs and jobs were lost, especially in ABC stations apart from Sydney and Melbourne.
Scott has already done a backflip on dumping the footy, although he is begging for more cash from the sports themselves and the government to fund its continuation for the next two years.
But the bowls and the arts unit and New Inventors and The Collectors have all gone for good and the smaller states and the regions have lost the staff and productions which kept them vibrant. The Senate's environment and communications references committee is due to deliver its report on Wednesday.
