The ABC of Changing

With the ABC facing a future with at least $155m less ($35.3m cut in the Federal Budget, plus $120m saving from the demise of Australia Network) than was expected, nothing is sacred. Television and radio current affairs flagship programmes are as much at risk as the myriad of vital behind the scenes support functions. Now that Peter Lewis, the government-appointed ABC efficiency auditor, has been appointed to the ABC Board, penny-pinching projects and efficiency drives are virtually assured. Restructures won’t be far away either – and that’s usually corporate code for redundancies.

But who wins?

The Federal Government has made a gain of $155 million to spend elsewhere. Is that significant in a budget with expenditure of $415b? Joe Hockey could’ve found similar savings by purchasing 57 of the F35 Joint Strike Fighter planes rather than 58, or by defunding the unpopular National Chaplaincy Service for about four years…but those don’t sit well with the Liberal Party’s conservative agenda. Financially, it’s a modest gain for the Budget at best.

The ABC is to some extent a soft target, and a very appealing one for a government which is not a fan of the national broadcaster. Almost every front bench minister in the Abbott government has endured some discomfort at the hands of ABC journalists. Conservative commentators such as Chris Kenny (a former Liberal senior staffer and unsuccessful Liberal candidate) and Janet Albrechtsen (a member of the panel that oversees appointments to the ABC board) see this as institutionalised bias against the Abbott government, rather than a failure of the government ministers on air.

In fact, both Kenny and Albrechtsen write for The Australian, so the ABC probably does look fairly “left” from their conservative perspective. Despite the numerous reviews, audits and surveys into the perception of bias at the ABC, no evidence of systemic bias has been found.

The on-again, off-again budget emergency and resulting slash and burn budget has provided the Government with the opportunity to adjust the perceived imbalance. Having said that, there’s no proof that a leaner news and current affairs operation would be any friendlier towards the current government.

The loftier benefit might just be the one suggested by Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, a long-time critic of the ABC’s perceived progressive agenda. Senator Bernardi noted that the ABC’s recent expansion into online news would be at the expense of established commercial media, particularly newspapers. Given Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s close relationship with Rupert Murdoch, and Murdoch’s ability to drive their shared agenda through his newspapers, Senator Bernardi is probably hoping that scaling back the ABC would result in their withdrawal from the online news space. His preference seems to be for the ABC to stay out of online news altogether, clearing the way for organisations such as Murdoch’s News Corporation and Fairfax Media to battle it out for online supremacy, as they have done for decades with printed newspapers.

But the development of the online platform as a legitimate news delivery mode has undermined the old Murdoch-Fairfax press duopoly; it simply doesn’t exist online.

The fundamental flaw in Senator Bernardi’s argument is that people who turn to ABC Online for news are unlikely to switch their allegiance to Murdoch’s news.com.au or newspapers. They would be far more likely to select from the many other news services: The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, the Fairfax titles, and for international news, BBC Global, New York Times and almost every other news organisation on the planet. 

When some ABC personalities’ salaries were accidentlyrevealed late last year, some on the anti-Aunty train will continue to call for salary cuts – a dangerous option at best. The ABC’s commercial rivals earn up to ten times the salaries of the ABC team. Cut the salaries a little, and the impact on the bottom line will be negligible. Cut more than a little, and the ABC would run the risk of losing their top-rating stars. 

Peter Lewis’s appointment to the ABC Board may indicate the opposite approach; after conducting an efficiency review of the ABC, his focus will be on trimming the back office areas and restructuring. Looking at the current ABC structure (above), there are obvious opportunities.

Forgive the management-speak: there are potential synergies available in reducing the overall number of director-level positions, and. in combining departments with related functions. The hypothetical restructure (below) reduces the number of Directors from the current thirteen (plus State/Territory Directors) to nine (plus State/Territory Directors), but makes the assumption that all thirteen areas are required. Of the four that have disappeared, three have been folded into the remaining nine departments. The last director-level position is the CEO – ABC International. Is this position required at all?

Further synergies may be found by rolling SBS into the picture in the areas of Corporate Services and Operations.

The massive downside of a restructure like this is that the newly organised corporation still needs to find around $35m in savings, and in order to preserve programme quality, these savings will largely come within the areas shaded red: the people no-one sees or hears.

Right now, the ABC needs to do two things: the first is to revisit its current strategy to ensure that the existing strategy aligns with both the ABC Charter and current output.

The second thing to do is to keep on being our dependable Aunty ABC, complete with Jemima and Big Ted, Tony Jones and Leigh Sales, Spencer Howson and Mark Colvin, two Bananas, News 24 and iView.