topic Re: The ABC has flab to be cut in Community Spirit

The ABC has flab to be cut

nero_bolt — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 07:56:09 GMT

This is but one story of the waste.

I fully support the cuts.... Time the ABC ran leaner and stoped being a cess pool of left leaning types

The ABC is supposed to be impartial and take the middle ground NOT the far left line as it does.

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"Good luck trying to change anything around here, there are too many lifers."

This was the advice given to me when I started as manager at ABC's Radio National last year.

It seemed like a dream job. I love the ABC and relished the opportunity to help steer RN.

But having previously worked as a journalist, foreign correspondent, editor and managing editor at lean, efficient and editorially robust media companies including Australian Associated Press, Fairfax and News Corp for over 20 years, I was shocked by the culture, waste, duplication and lax workplace practices exercised in some pockets of Radio National. I was even more shocked by the failure of the executive to want to do anything about it.

One problem, as one insider pointed out, was the so-called lifers, a pocket of predominantly middle-aged, Anglo-Saxon staff who had never worked anywhere other than the ABC, who were impervious to change, unaccountable, untouchable and who harboured a deep sense of entitlement.

They didn't have a 9-5 mentality. They had a 10-3 mentality. They planned their work day around their afternoon yoga class. They wore thongs and shorts to work, occasionally had a snooze on the couch after lunch and popped out to Paddy's Market to buy fresh produce for dinner before going home.

They were like free-range chickens, wandering around at will, pecking at this and that, content that laying one egg constituted a hard day's work.

They knew they couldn't be sacked or officially sanctioned because there was no appetite among the executive to make waves, take on the union or make a case for any more redundancies. So the lifers just thumbed their nose at any attempt at performance management. Managers came and went, but they were there for life.

The RN budget was another shock. It was predominantly tied up in wages for 150 people. There was precious little budget to do anything new or innovative and you couldn't turn any program off, no matter how high its costs and how poor its audience share and reach.

The executive would pander to the whims of celebrity presenters because they gave the ABC "edge and credibility", yet would take for granted journalistic giants like Fran Kelly and Geraldine Doogue who present world-class programs.

While online rules the media world, trying to get some RN producers to repurpose on-air content for online was like pulling teeth. Plus the systems they were using were archaic, due to a failure to invest in efficient, integrated content-management systems that worked across divisions and on multi platforms, especially on mobile devices.

There was also blatant waste. Taxi dockets were left in unlocked drawers for the taking and elephantine leave balances had been allowed to accumulate. When programs shut down for Christmas, staff would get approval from their executive producers to hang around for a week or two "to tidy things up". One editor asked for his leave to be cut back by a week because he'd need to pop into work during the holidays to "check emails".That constituted work.

Yet attempts to tighten basic oversight of taxi use and leave, controls that are the norm in the corporate world, were frowned upon by the ABC executive and actively discouraged as "not the main game".

Programming and content generation was another shock. While other media organisations live and die by their ratings, circulation and readership figures, some ABC programmers considered ratings irrelevant. Some producers strongly resisted editorial oversight and locked in segments that lacked editorial rigour and relevance. So the weekly Media Report went to air discussing foreign press freedoms while hundreds of Australian journalists were being made redundant just down the road.

The ABC can be leaner and remain editorially strong and independent as ABC's NewsRadio proves. With less than 20 per cent of RN's total budget, NewsRadio employs brilliant broadcasters including Sandy Aloisi and Marius Benson and produces 5000 hours of robust original content each year that reaches a bigger national weekly audience than RN.

That's why these ABC budget cuts announced by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull are not just necessary but vital to the ongoing health of the corporation.

Pockets of the ABC have been allowed to get too fat, flabby, wasteful and unaccountable.

The doors have to be prised open so that the winds of change that have swept through media companies around the world can reinvigorate our ABC.

The same efficiencies and workplace practices that are the norm in corporate Australia need to be front and centre at the ABC so that it remains a strong, independent voice that is both editorially robust and reflects who we are - a culturally, geographically and socio-economically diverse nation that doesn't believe anyone is entitled to a job for life at the taxpayer's expense.

Louise Evans is a former manager at ABC's Radio National and former managing editor at The Australian.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

cherry*135 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:04:06 GMT

A $400m talkfest for 48 hours, called G20, is a waste of money. (especially considering our PM's lame speech!!)

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

myoclon1cjerk — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:06:34 GMT

Election eve promise.No cuts to ABC & SBS.Another lie.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

debra9275 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:08:22 GMT

Why are all the Murdoch press gloating?

They should be sorry to see fellow journos lose their jobs

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

cherry*135 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:08:37 GMT

What was that you said?

@myoclon1cjerk wrote:
Election eve promise.No cuts to ABC & SBS. Another lie.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

myoclon1cjerk — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:10:09 GMT

..." and socio-economically diverse nation that doesn't believe anyone is entitled to a job for life "
That means we have lots of poor people.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

myoclon1cjerk — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:11:32 GMT

..and we should be proud of it.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

cherry*135 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:11:38 GMT

Louise Evans is a former manager at ABC's Radio National and former managing editor at The Australian.

What is her current position?

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

myoclon1cjerk — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:13:59 GMT

Spokesperson for Newscorpse?

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

nero_bolt — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:21:05 GMT

@am*3 wrote:
A $400m talkfest for 48 hours, called G20, is a waste of money. (especially considering our PM's lame speech!!)

You seem to have some serious memory loss happening..... Let me help you out your your memory laspe.........The Ruddster and Poor Me Gillard (Labor) organised the G20 and won the rights to it and locked it in....

But anyway do please try and stay on topic and the topic is the ABC and what a bloated organisation it is

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

myoclon1cjerk — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:24:37 GMT

Bloated according to Scabbott and his lapdog Turnball.What a spineless vertebrate the latter is.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

debra9275 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:28:33 GMT

What will murdoch's headlines be tomorrow. The cuts didn't go deep enough? I've just unfollowed sky news on twitter and will boycott their news station now

Their trashy newspapers don't count, I never read those anyway and never will

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

j*oono — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:28:55 GMT

I agree. At one stage I thought that Turnbull had some substance and had a high intellect and was a decent politician. Now he is just a shell with a blank look on his face as he performs as bid.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

debra9275 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:29:29 GMT

Perhaps they're worried that poor people might have televisions

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

debra9275 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:30:47 GMT

Doesn't Turnbull look very unwell lately Joono

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

j*oono — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:31:15 GMT

Unwell and unhappy Deb.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

gleee58 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 09:34:37 GMT

@j*oono wrote:
I agree. At one stage I thought that Turnbull had some substance and had a high intellect and was a decent politician. Now he is just a shell with a blank look on his face as he performs as bid.

I'd like to know which are the 100+ websites that they're closing down.

I can't get my head around them having over 200 web sites. Are they talking about all the various links of the local programs and radio stations or what? If it's all the local program pages I don't understand why.

I also haven't heard about ABC Open. Did it get cut or is that the new style ABC?

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

wilk1149 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 19:53:00 GMT

Lets eliminate the ABC altogether. We could just get Andrew Bolt to whinge about Labor foe twenty four hours a day. I mean he is so right about everything. Why would anyone in their right mind want to know anything about what is happening around the world. The only thing that a true team Australia person needs to know is "it's Labor's fault". Hey nero. The panacea for all that is wrong with Australia "it's Labor's fault". Those three words are the ways and means of fixing everything wrong with Australia.

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

lurker172602 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 20:22:47 GMT

@nero_wulf wrote:

Time the ABC ran leaner and stoped being a cess pool of left leaning types

The ABC is supposed to be impartial and take the middle ground NOT the far left line as it does.

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Where exactly in all that does Louise mention "the left"? Or is that you putting words into her mouth?

Re: The ABC has flab to be cut

nero_bolt — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 21:04:56 GMT

The ABC, regardless of its bias, should be cut. It has a massive budget at a time when the country is going broke, and has plenty of fat to cut - especially after having a 10 per cent increase in funding from Labor Governments since 2008.

But had the ABC managers played it smart they’d at least have made sure they didn’t alienate many potential supporters by moving aggressively and shamelessly to the Left.

Nick Cater notes:

In 1996 seven out of 10 Australians watched ABC TV at least once in any given week.

This week barely four out of 10 will bother tuning in to the flagship channel, according to the broadcaster’s 2013-14 annual report, which shows that even when the other ABC channels are included, the reach of ABC TV is declining.

Three out of four metropolitan radio listeners find something better to listen to than ABC Local Radio, News Radio, Radio National, Triple J or Classic FM.

As for the ABC’s digital websites into which the corporation has invested much money and hope, the cold hard fact of the matter is that 75 per cent of Australians never log into them at all.

For much of the time the majority of Australians are blithely disengaged from the ABC…

That does not mean, however, that the case for public investment in broadcasting is any less strong than it was 20 years ago.

Far from it; the polarisation of politics and culture make the ABC’s mission to “stand solid and serene in the middle of our national life”, as former chairman Richard Boyer once put it, even more important.

If ever there were a place where, say, Andrew Bolt and David Marr should be able to meet to debate the issues of the day it should surely be on the publicly funded ground of the ABC. Indeed, for 10 years from 2001 to 2011 Bolt was a regular guest on Insiders, where he would regularly encounter Marr and other proud defenders of progressivism with entertaining results.

That Bolt eventually split from the program to host his own on Channel 10 was a reflection of an increasing intolerance towards views that went against conventional wisdom.

When contributors of the calibre of Janet Albrechtsen and Miranda Devine are forced off the flagship political debating forum, Q&A, however, the ABC should recognise it is in trouble.

When its critics talk about an ABC position on climate change, asylum-seekers or the Catholic Church, where is the defence? Why don’t we hear the chairman or the managing director’s passionate defence of the ABC’s neutrality and its overriding commitment to plurality? (Because its NOT neutral)

Defending public broadcasting in this multi-channel, narrow-casting era will be increasingly difficult unless the ABC is committed to occupy the centre.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/the_abc_should_not_be_this_friendless_among_conservatives/

A very good point indeed.

True, I left Insiders essentially because it was better to be the host of my own show than a once-in-six-weeks panelist on someone else’s, but the point remains. Other conservatives did not want to go on Insiders to be the one against the three, and since I left Insiders it has dumped the conservative Piers Akerman and the centrist Glenn Milne, and failed to bring in any replacements from the non-Left.

The ABC is hostile territory for conservatives as every conservative would privately confirm, and that is inexcusable in sate-funded broadcaster which by law is obliged to be balanced.