Carve Up The ABC, Mr. Abbott

An incoming Coalition Government should look closely at the ABC; its agenda, its funding and whether or not the Australian taxpayer has been getting value for money.

Over a number of years, value for money has not been the case.

I believe the ABC has reached its ‘use-by’ date.  Managing Director, Mark Scott has had plenty of time during his tenure to yank the ABC into a reliable, balanced and factual broadcaster thus maintaining consumer loyalty.  

Mark Scott has failed.

The ABC’s radio and television arms run almost as many obnoxious advertisements (for itself) as those commercial broadcasters rely on, legitimately paid for as part of their business models.

After years of being a rusted-on supporter of the ABC, I feel betrayed.  People who know me know I don’t take prisoners.  Break it up, sell it off, I no longer care.   The ABC has lost its status as a sacred cow and certainly does not deserve my support or sympathy.

It’s pretty obvious there is quite a large revolt against the ABC and it only has itself to blame.  A partisan attitude towards the green/left aside, dumbing down of the public broadcaster is unforgivable.  I used to love the science programme, Catalyst.  Had I regressed to the age of 12, I may still love it!

I regularly turn to Catallaxy Files to catch up on weekly threads dedicated to the irrelevanace of the ABC’s Monday night Q and A programme.  It saves me having to endure an hour’s worth of leftoid drivel.

The ABC can be as ‘flabbergasted’ as it likes.  I’ve adjusted my viewing and listening habits, particularly over the past five years or so and I couldn’t give a rat’s rectum as the ABC sinks under the weight of its own ‘group-think’!

From mUmBRELLA:  Click link for full article.

ABC ‘flabbergasted’ by BBC’s Foxtel move

A new premiere BBC drama and comedy channel to be launched by BBC Worldwide and Foxtel has left the ABC “flabbergasted”, a spokeswoman has told Mumbrella.

Following 50 years of broadcasting BBC content in Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was not consulted about plans to launch a premium channel on Foxtel in mid-2014.

A spokeswoman for the ABC said the public service broadcaster had been seeking talks with the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide as its three year contract comes to an end on June 30 next year, but had been knocked back before the announcement was made.

“We were pretty flabbergasted,” a spokeswoman said. ”We only found out yesterday and we had been asking them for a while to sit down to talk about a new deal, so we were pretty shocked.”

The new premium channel will feature”premiere British drama and comedy, ad-break free and as close to UK transmission as possible,” Foxtel said in a press release.

However the ABC will retain popular shows such as Doctor Who, as it has a contract for the lifetime of the show, and Grand Designs and QI which will not be affected by the deal.

Content used on Four Corners from the BBC’s Panorama will also be unaffected, as will popular children’s programs such as Peppa Pig – the number one program on ABC iView - the spokeswoman said.

ABC Self Policing - The Danger Within

Malcolm Colless has an interesting piece in Quadrant Online outlining the roughness of the media playing field as it stands today under the current Labor regime purporting to be running this country.  Into the ground - but that's another story.  There is nothing level about the media playing field when it comes to 'their' ABC.   Not 'our' ABC - although we all pay for the thing.

The socialist bias within the ABC is now no longer something to joke about.  There is not one conservative presenter on radio or television.  Programme presenters such as Jon Faine (Local Radio 774)  Leigh Sales  (7.30) and Tony Jones (Q & A) no longer feel shackled by the ABC's Code of Practice and fly their political preference flags with gay abandon.

Should commerical media fall victim to constrictions and, by definition, censorship if the government of the day gets its way, then the powerful media outlet, the ABC, should be subject to the same regulatory controls.  Why should the ABC be treated differently?  It is in the media business afterall, although taxpayer funded, which is all the more reason the ABC should be accountable.
...........................................................................................

QED
The ABC's indecent advantage
by Malcolm Colless

November 30, 2012

There has been a lot of whinging lately by the free-to-air TV broadcasters about lopsided competition rules. Free TV Australia, the commercial television lobby group, has urged the government to impose tax penalties on the major international online companies to create “a level playing field”. The FTAs should know all about this, as they have enjoyed years of unfair advantage over any competition in their patch.

But the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with the help of its owner, our Federal Government, is well positioned to take advantage of a very uneven playing field in the future digital delivery of news and opinion online.

The reason is quite simple. While traditional commercial media companies, particularly print operators, are finding it increasingly necessary to build pay walls around their digital content, the ABC can, and presumably will, continue to provide its content for free, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer.

On a “share of voices” meter, which measures across-the-board media impact, the ABC leaves the rest of the industry for dead -- and it always has via the sheer number of its taxpayer-funded outlets.

The spectre that this raises is of ABC dominance on the news and current affairs digital platforms already battling for market share and advertising revenue as traditional media outlets attempt to cope with a seismic shift in community reading and viewing habits. The fact that the ABC does not need to worry about establishing pay walls to underwrite the value of its content puts it in a very powerful and potentially monopolistic position. While the Labor Government may see this as a comfortable alternative to a hostile press it raises serious questions about the free flow of information, a basic component of any democracy.

The government has already taken a giant step towards controlling this information with the establishment of the National Broadband Network. It would have us believe the multi-billion dollar NBN is necessary to shore up Australia’s competitiveness in global markets, having argued that this task cannot be successfully carried out by private enterprise. Time will tell if this policy assumption is correct, but the government’s aim in the meantime is to nationalise the information superhighway and be its content gatekeeper.

All of this is pertinent to Labor’s desire to put more shackles on an already heavily regulated press in order to placate left-wing political pressures in its own minority-government camp. The opportunity for government action on this comes from the inquiry it ordered into media regulation (it would prefer it to be known as “reform”) conducted by former judge Ray Finkelstein.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who has carriage of this issue ( and ministerial control of the ABC and SBS), may well see the traditional press as a soft target. We will see about that. But he has learned that trying to interfere with the flow of internet information can be a dangerous game indeed.

In 2008 Conroy unveiled a scheme to legislate mandatory filtering by internet service providers of Refused Classification-rated material hosted on overseas servers. This brought an immediate and hostile response from internet users, particularly when it was found that the Government’s intended hit list went well beyond child-abuse websites and the like.

Despite deferring a final decision until after the 2010 federal election Conroy maintained his support for the scheme, but yielded to unrelenting opposition earlier this month when he announced the proposed legislation had been abandoned.

So it will be interesting to see how far Cabinet is prepared to go in the face of Finkelstein’s recommendation for all media outlets to be covered by a new “super-media regulatory body” which would be called the News Media Council.

Whether this can be justified in terms other than those of naked politics is another matter. But whatever the merits of that case, the fact remains the ABC has strenuously argued that what may be good for commercial media’s goose is not good for its own, taxpayer-funded gander, meaning that it needs to be left to operate under its own internal complaints system.



Veteran journalist Malcolm Colless believes in freedom of speech -- and a level playing field

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2012/11/the-abc-s-indecent-advantage

Here's How It Works At The ABC

This graphic has been shamelessly pinched from Samuel J's piece over at Catallaxy.

However, we all need to see how our tax dollars are working for all Australians when it comes to funding of "their" ABC - not ours..

Of course, there is no bias at the ABC.  Apparently, Managing Director, Mark Scott made some sort of commitment/ promise thingamy to smooth out or disappear any funny stuff at the ABC as Gerard Henderson has been at pains to point out.  Gerard has also been diligent in keeping tabs on just how many from the Conservative side of politics have been bestowed with important editorial and journalistic roles at Aunty.

What's wrong with the bleeding obvious?

The relevant bits contained in the graphic might be a bit hard to read, but if you click on the link to Catallaxy above, all will be revealed.