So instead of using its resources to ensure the devlopment and creation of great programming all year round, ABC cuts jobs, limits the internal experience and skills which have developed over many years. The ABC will only be a shell of its former glory. Nothing but one office to air programs made by private sector producers. This is the death of public broadcasting...
Sydney Morning Herlad - 24 November 2011
SUMMER holidays have come early once again for the ABC's successful Monday-night line-up. One month from Christmas, the fascinating bloc of Four Corners,Media Watch and Q&A has finished for the year, not to return until February.
It's an absence that mystifies viewers of the shows every year and, with each annual departure, collective surprise at the clocking off gives way to disappointment, then annoyance. Put simply: the world doesn't stop turning for three months of the year.
Media Watch, in particular, should be running at full tilt right now. With the federal government's media inquiry holding hearings, issues more than merely pertinent to the persistent quarter-hour hosted by Jonathan Holmes are being raised. The inquiry's head, former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein QC, is asking questions that have long been framed by Media Watch and he's often asking them of industry figures who usually aren't open to scrutiny.
It's not as if Monday night is overloaded with competing quality. For a large audience, the remote control was barely needed at the beginning of each week. Q&A, for all its flaws, has no problem generating the content that serves as its oxygen, while the wide-ranging scope of Four Corners means it should rarely lack a suitable topic. The ABC has a knack for going from the sublime to the ridiculous - just watch The Slap and Crownies one after the other on Thursday evening - and this is another worrying example.
It's odd the national broadcaster, which is clearly in expansionary mode with the addition of new channels and a growing online presence, should give the impression it is stinting on its popular core. From the outside it appears the ABC is spreading its resources too widely, trying to do too much with too little. There's little point having multiple channels if the most popular one hibernates through the summer to conserve limited resources.
Although the ABC isn't exposed to claims of waste - most staff on these shows are under contract, which means they're not paid during the hiatus - the network does have form when it comes to being stretched to breaking point at inopportune times. Breaking news, often in the form of natural disasters, does not respect a February-to-November calendar.
ABC News 24 - one of the most prominent additions to the national broadcaster's roster - has been caught out several times in the past 12 months. Having already established a reputation for technical glitches, the fledgling news provider was caught on the hop by the massive Queensland floods of December and January. With many of the ABC's big guns already absent, ABC News 24 appeared to be off the pace and it was the commercial networks that quickly provided comprehensive coverage.
Any lesson had not been processed by March, when the channel had a horror weekend in which planned programming carried on even as the tsunami in Japan was proving devastating in terms of loss of life and property. Even as reports about leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant began to circulate, there was little response from what was assumed by many commentators to be a skeleton staff.
Whether it's an early goodbye come the end of the year or being caught out unexpectedly when news breaks, there's a perception that the ABC is brittle, that it doesn't have enough money for what it is trying to do. The traditional response has been to lament the lack of funding but ABC managing director Mark Scott has not gone unheard in Canberra in recent years, which means the ambition has to be questioned.
The one thing the ABC has, which no budget can replace, is the Australian public's trust. As much as second-guessing the network's choices is an enduring pursuit, there's a high level of institutional respect that surfaces whenever there are problems. ABC Radio, for example, plays a crucial role during bushfire season.
If the ABC keeps finishing some of its best programming too early, or can't accommodate breaking news on a news channel, then the public's doubts will erode a respect that's been forged over decades.
