It’s a bit of a hard ask to keep up with all the policy reviews the Rudd government has initiated. And they appear to be in the habit of releasing the results or closing deadlines for submissions well into the Christmas blah season – though whether that’s deliberate or not is another kettle of fish. Anyway, the response to the review of public broadcasting was by all accounts quite overwhelming. Some colleagues and friends of mine at QUT put in a submission – which you can read about here at Terry Flew’s blog.
The points made in Terry’s post might be enough to riff off, but I’d be interested in any case in opening a discussion on where public broadcasting should go. I think we’re at an interesting crossroads where some of the unintended consequences of the Howard government’s funding cuts to ABC and SBS can now be leveraged into something more interesting – particularly in light of some innovation overseas (especially in Britain). I have a feeling that in the less “big picture” areas of federal government responsibility some more interesting developments are likely to occur under the Rudd government than in the headline stuff. And public broadcasting is one arena that can potentially attract a lot of citizen input. After all, it’s our ABC (and SBS) etc… That might particularly be the case given the apparent fluidity of ABC management personnel and thinking Margaret Simons has been covering at Content Makers.
So, as they say, let it rip!
Elsewhere: Margaret Simons.
I really like the system of appointments they have in the UK – that would prevent something like what we had under Howard that completely politicised the ABC.
I’d like to see more docos on the ABC and less British trash like Grump Old Women/Men # 23
Meanwhile, the ABC gets ticked off yet again for lefty bias: http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/media/s2447453.htm
What role does SBS really serve in the media landscape now? Many nights of the week it’s American or Australian shows on. Stuff like Salamm (apologies for the misspelling) cafe may fill the brief of a multicultural broadcaster but this could also be a brief for an ABC3 channel. THe proliferation of Satellite and IPTV makes it easier for people to get TV from their home countries. Wouldn’t we be better off having special channels within the ABC that focus on foreign content (ie Inspector Rex)and including the Australian multicultural orginal content within the ABC’s brief?
SBS still has the only news that actually looks properly at events outside Australia. I often watch it to find out what is going on elsewhere in the world. As long as they still have something that you aren’t going to see anywhere else, I think they should stay.
SBS’s news service is mostly rehashed foreign reporting and is such a cut above the rest of the Australian news.
But why shouldn’t this be part of the ABC’s brief instead?
I am just interested in hearing the case for two public broadcasters versus one – especially with multicasting technology now.
Probably because the ABC does regional news in many places. We get Canberra ABC news with only a dash of what’s happening in the rest of Australia and a little bit of overseas stuff. They probably can’t fit it all in a 1/2 hour slot.
And they should do something abvout commercials during programs on SBS. And putting movies on at a more accessible time. But they won’t. RWDBs reign – not OK.
Mindy the locally-flavoured bland that is ABC news is not particular to regional areas. It is just as bad in Melbourne. ABC news is little better than the commercial networks.
Have you seen commercial network news?! The ABC might not be that great (under-resourced, cross promoting etc) but the commercials are just awful. Really really REALLY awful. Celebrity clap trap and even more rabid cross promotion.
Something that is important to recognise is that neither the ABC nor the SBS are any longer simply broadcasters. Both have a significant – and in the case of the ABC, substantial – online presence, which makes the issues for 21st century public service media organisations (note: we refer to public service media, not simply public service broadcasting) different to those that faced them in the one-to-many broadcast media-driven 20th century.
Indeed, one of the prompts to this inquiry are the issues faced by both ABC and SBS in providing online services. Online is not mentioned in the Charters of either of them, and providing online services imposes new costs upon them. Unlike radio and television where the marginal cost of delivery is zero (i.e. once the infrastructure is built, there are near-zero cot differences between delivering to 100 or 1 million people), downloads present a direct cost to the ABC and SBS in terms of use of bandwidth, so that the more people who use their online services, the more it can cost them. Obviously this is not a desirable situation for media that seeks to be available to all Australians,
In our submission, we engage with the question of social innovation. Social innovation historically has come in one of two ways. Public service broadcasters come from the top-down, institutional design approach, where governments identify a problem and design an institution to address it.
The other way is bottom-up social innovation, which has largely driven the Internet. The US military may have first built it and designed it, but almost all of the innovations that have spun off from it have come from other sources, in a decentralised, fragmented manner. The question for 21st century PSMs (known as PSBs in the 20th century) is whether they can capture the best of both approaches – top-down and bottom-up, institutional and decentralised. We hope that our submission provides some thoughts on how that may best be achieved.
SBS is more than what you see on the TeeVee folks.
There is an entire radio broadcast network that is very important to new migrant and multicultural communities. If you are from an OTE background where do you go? The ABC? Ten? Pay? 2GB? Sixty-Eight languages are served there.
There is a very good translation/subtitle/Closed captioning business there.
It may not seem that way to television viewers but SBS produces a lot of local product across the network. More than anyone in Australia, full stop.
Anyhoo, Lets look at today on Tee Vee.
6pm Global Village
6:30 World News
7:30 Rex (OK waaaaaay too much Rex tonight but apparently the kiddies love it)
9:30 More World News
10 Hebrew Language film
11:40 Spanish language film
Tomorrow night you get things like Counter Culture, the usual Hitler doco, a French film, a doco, more world news. I don’t see a lot of American or British programming there.
Sure, but in effect we already have that, it’s just not called the ABC. But there is another reason why not to merge. The charter and programming brief is absolutely distinct from that of the ABC, this creates a different culture and mindset in how you do things.
An established infrastructure and culture to deliver a different kind of content to a subset of Australian communities exist now, so why not allow them to continue rather that absorbing them into something else where the specific impetus that drives them does not exist and probably never will?
There are some things they could do that make sense as Margaret Simons points out her blog The Content Makers.
I think the dollar figure is something like a third of the funds we pump into the public broadcasters. I’d stand corrected if someone has the correct number.
As someone who supplies ‘content’ (hate the word) to both ABC and SBS on occasion, I think it’s also important to recognise that they’re both institutions which are inextricably ties in with the independent film and television sector.
SBS – TV only produces their news and Datleine. Everything is outsourced either by commissioning or acquiring on completion from independent companies. ABC also outsources a great deal of content and plans to do even more so in the future. So, both broadcasters are a lot more than stand alone entities.
So for instance, if we want to talk about the provision of on-line services, it’s these independent companies who bear much of the brunt of the costs. Now production companies also have to produce on-line content, but there isn’t a budget increase to do more with. The money either comes out of the production values, or the producer’s pockets.
I’m sure both broadcasters will end up charging for downloads in the future, which will be a pity, but they’re constantly looking for ways to commercialise product. So, another question is whether audiences think this is a good idea.
One of my biggest bugbears is the fact ABC radio broadcasts on AM frequencies in capital cities, meaning it can’t be picked up live by the new tech MP3 players, mobile phones etc, except in provincial cities.
Does anybody know how the Stephen Crittenden controversy ended?
Johnno@11
It was actually Stphen Conroy who has raised the matter of the transmission costs for ABC and SBS:
Link from Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald
Linked text
Agree with all of your points about the distinctive Charters, cultures and missions of ABC and SBS. The Australian media ecology is much stronger for having these two distinct organisations.
Margaret Simons:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2008/12/18/the-future-for-the-abc-and-sbs-public-service-not-public-broadcasting/
If any of you have digital tellies, you can get SBS Radio through the box. There’s both a foreign- and English-language service; the latter ain’t too bad.
I think it’s unreasonable to complain that ABC’s news bulletin doesn’t adequately cover overseas. Honestly, you’ve got the entire internet for international news, including ABC News Online (append one of their dozens of rss feeds to your broswer), as well as any number of foreign magazines that do the rounds at the office. The broadcaster’s prerogative is domestic, and if it cedes that to the Commercials in an attempt to pointlessly compete with SBS World News, then we really are in trouble.
Someone should inform them that it’s almost the year 2009.
What sublime cowgirl said.
A bit OT but speaking of Crikey and TV, did anyone catch Christian Kerr on Sky’s Agenda program today? Talk about a stuffed shirt. You know you’re pretty right-wing when Mark Kenny is disagreeing with you. Kerr was trying to blame our current economic situation on Kevin Rudd despite the protesting by Kenny and host David Spears. “He’s trying to transfer blame offshore”, yeah good call. Hopefully Turnbull decides to start running with that one. Absolute pillock.