ABC Managing Director Mark Scott has created quite the stir with his A. N. Smith Memorial Lecture in Melbourne last night. Scott took a pot shot at Rupert Murdoch, characterising him as a “frantic emperor”. Decline and fall of old media empires, and all that.
As Jason Wilson observed yesterday in New Matilda, Murdoch’s previous business plays were built on positioning himself for oligopolistic market shares in emerging media. This strategy doesn’t work in the world of online content, so Murdoch is trying to reshape that world to suit his modus operandi. Cutting public broadcasters out of the equation would be an essential component of such a strategy, but despite the fact that he’s leveraged political influence in the past for his own private interests, Murdoch finds himself isolated. Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and Kevin Rudd are hardly likely to do him any favours, and the very fragmentation of audiences and platforms he’s seeking to counter has reduced any potential for his implicit political threats to have teeth.
Public broadcasters, in other words, have a unique role to play in preserving the openess and competitiveness of new media ecologies.
There’s been lots of commentary on Scott’s speech. Margaret Simons writes at Content Makers, Gary Sauer-Thompson chimes in at Public Opinion, while Ethical Martini and Trevor Cook both put somewhat different and interesting perspectives to work in analysing Scott’s lecture.
Update: Guy Rundle.
Update: Sophie Cunningham.
Update: More from Margaret Simons in today’s Crikey.
Update: Ben Eltham in New Matilda:
As I watched Scott’s speech and the ensuing questions, I began to get a sense of how clueless many media executives really are. I’m fairly certain Scott knows more about this stuff than, for example, Roger Corbett does. In fact, Scott pointed this out later in his speech, arguing that old thinking and internal barriers to reform are the biggest problems for media organisations. “We have seen the enemy, and it is us.”
If Scott is among the savviest — and he may well be — then the path ahead for big media organisations in this country will be rocky indeed.
In the land of the blind, the man with a print-out of a Clay Shirky blog is king.
Update: Guy Rundle.
Margaret Simons and others ventilating on Scott’s speech need to take a cold shower On the ABC Simons described Scott as a Media thinker. Gimme a break. I worked with the guy for years he never had an idea on his own but now he is distilling the thoughts most of us have had for many years about the media. When we put it to him eight years ago that we needed to talk about internet and print integration 24 / hour news rooms and let’s try a few ideas he couldn’t see the point. All he did at Fairfax was help Fred screw the journalists and exit people from the building. He had no clue and sought no answers except job cuts as the circulation plunged under his leadership. In the end he just shrugged his shoulders and said it was a world wide phenomenon which was enough to get him a bonus. He left Fairfax demonstrating that he had had no ideas about how to tackle the new environment. The bloke who put up a paper entitled Imagine Fairfax without the classifieds was shown the door.
Eric Beecher’s piece on his address to the boardroom shows nothing changed. Now Scott is the new messiah on media? Please. The flaw in his argument sticks out like you know whats. He has access to taxpayers funds of course he doesn’t have to worry about charging for content or firewalls.
I think Murdoch is wrong on firewalls but don’t present Scott to us as some sort of genius. Even Fred Hilmer could run a media company on this sort of business model.
What he gave us last night was a distillation of a lot of other people’s ideas.
Thanks for the link to the transcript, Mark (ironically hosted by Rupe).
First class writing, I thought. Would have been a great lecture to listen to.
Durutticolumn may be right in his assessment of the man, but I found his message interesting and I’m looking forward to the stoush, particularly the sight of all those secondary media moguls that Scott predicts will push the Dirty Digger in his crusade but go AWOL when the going gets tough. One possible benefit might be a lot more primary news gathering, investigation and analysis by public broadcasting journo staff. Denied the morning broadsheets, the ABC folk might have to do a bit more legwork. I hope they’re up to it.
Na. the ABC morning crew will just budget for paying Rupe for news. So what we’ll get is Rupe free through the prism of Trioli and others. The things already a yawn. Its programmed on the basis of a little bit of chat and repeat after repeat after repeat It’ll just become a bigger one. You never know, Auntie might just save News Corp. because no other bugger will pay for it.
Reality check. Whatever Mark Scott may say in a lecture, the current ABC that Scott presides over is rapidly becoming a joke, with most news content seemingly directly sourced from News Ltd and coalition talking points, dumbed down news and current affairs and tired and borrowed formats dominating its local drama and comedy output.
The more it becomes a pale imitation of commercial media the less it can possibly justify its existence as a taxpayer funded media institution.
Rupert Murdoch attacked “aggregators and plagiarists”, which has been widely interpreted as an attack on Google and other services that abstract content from news providers. I might be a bit confused here, but I thought most of the news that is our papers come from media releases, public relations puff and advertorials. I am not sure how much original news content is actually coming from current media outlets. rupert is just a gate keeper trying to protect the tythe he has been receiving from all those he lets through. I think the real issue is whether the real news producers, ie people who actually do something, will continue to use intermediaries such as Newscorp, or will they try and develop strategies to get their stories out directly to the public.
That is a great point, Steve 1, and also partly responsible for the decline I suspect – bloggers can get press releases just as easily as journalists.
Margaret Simons has some longer analysis in today’s Crikey:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/10/15/your-abc-and-their-news-limited-medias-empire-games/
Sophie Cunningham at Meanjin’s Spike:
http://meanjin.com.au/spike-the-meanjin-blog/post/the-fall-of-rome/
It’s interesting to me that what’s being concentrated on here is news and current affairs. Yet, that’s only a part of what broadcasters do. The monoliths will fall not only because there’s other ways of getting news, but because there’s other ways of getting, drama, comedy, light entertainment, magazine shows, documentaries etc. And the ABC’s value is not only about news and current affairs.
WHat ever Scott might be like personally, the ABC seems to be taking this far more seriously and imaginatively than other broadcasters.
Please give some examples, fine. Seriously, apart from a few Denton produced shows and some imports wort watching there’s not a lot to justify their existence IMHO.
I honestly don’t know what the point of the ABC is in its current incarnation, unless we require another outlet for News Ltd and the BBC.
Surely what the example of the ABC shows, above all else, is that when all it has to compete with is a few private operators, mostly staffed by old farts who are less interested in news reportage than in stuffing their own pockets; when government restricts the entry of new, international competitors into the market with local-content restrictions and similar; when free-to-air rules regarding local arts and sports content hold back the few pay TV operators; and when the politicians in charge of the whole scene are mostly more interested in what they can get out of it personally than the good that some competition provides for the country – that, in these circumstances, the ABC will produce a few relatively decent but mostly boring television programs of some interest to the minority of people who are interested in specialist subjects.
Competitiveness? It would be a nice idea!
There is more to the abc than just television.
Adrian, I’m not attempting to argue that the ABC is a bastion of top flight tv and every individual program is tremendously worthwhile. What I’m arguing is that if you’re talking about the ABC as a broadcaster, then it’s more useful to talk about what it’s doing in totality, whether you think it’s good or bad, as the national broadcaster. My point is that it’s more than just newscaf.
My reference about it taking new media more seriously and imaginatively is more to do with form. With things like iView, podcasts etc. It realises that the old pradigm doesn’t work. It’s not an argument about the specific qualities of programs.
And it’s true that it’s more that tv, as well.
Just to add, for instance this on-line kids’ program.
http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/figaropho/
Update: Ben Eltham in New Matilda:
Adrian, I’m mainly a consumer of ABC radio. Background briefing, the Science show, the National Interest, and the yartz programs like Poetica, Rear Vision, Big Idea, By Design etc, are all required listening for me (not all the time, of course, I don’t have that much leisure, but radio does lend itself to housework and chores.) May not all be “news” but I certainly learn a lot that I don’t get from the squawking trendies on the commercial stations. You’ll get my RN from my cold dead hands, buddy.
Durruticolumn, spot on.
Mark, love your pun about a Clay Shirky printout. He’s the same Clay Shirky who thought the so-called “Twitter revolution” in Iran was “the big one”. Oops.
I have just handed over the MSS for my next book, out in early 2010 with A&U.
News 2.0: Can journalism survive the Internet?
In a nutshell yes of course, the news industry is not going to let billions of dollars of investors cold hard cash go down the toilet.
The MSM is already colonising the Cit J and social media space.
iReport is IndyMedia on steroids, but without the awkward anarchist politics.
Twitter is now just a giant marketing tool for legacy media and on-demand web-based television use to be YouTube.
Scott’s lament that the moguls “just don’t get it” is way off the mark.
Ethical Martini – that’s Ben’s pun – quote from his piece!
Can we revolutionise academic publishing while we’re at it?
@Andos If you haven’t seen or heard the speech there is a recorded video available via Live @ Melbourne; AN Smith Lecture in Journalism
cheers
Check Mark, I’ve just read his New Matilda piece, a very nice line.
Ben Eltham Yes it was interesting I was just pointing out it was a confection of other people’s ideas. he says we see the enemy and it is us we saw the enemy and it was him. Having Fred Hilmer and Scott at Fairfax at a watershed period for the media was the perfect storm. Any chance Fairfax had of creating a viable business model were swept away in a torrent of management speak and clueless decisions.
I am delighted the ABC is taking on the role outlined by Scott more power to them, But it is a state owned media enterprise and we should be concerned that if when the dust settles it is the only one standing. I am hoping some sort of mdoel for a thriving news delivery system funded by income from advertising can be found.
I did not see anything in Scott’s speech that would point to this new commercial model.
In a nutshell yes of course, the news industry is not going to let billions of dollars of investors cold hard cash go down the toilet.
I’m afraid, Ethical, that it already has. For example, Henry Blodget of the Huffington Post concludes that Murdoch’s MySpace Is Probably Pretty Much Worthless. I don’t think it is worthless, but it is worth a lot less than the 580 million Rupert Murdoch paid for it. He probably paid too much for it anyway, but was the massive price slide inevitable?
I doubt it. For example, MySpace became a tool for musos and artists to promote themselves; it allows them to upload their music and work so that others can download it. It sounds like a great place to get the latest music, except for one thing: your average muso site is (a) fugly beyond compare (b) starts up the music automatically (which many people hate). That drives people away.
If Rupert and co had taken the time to invest in the site – replace the godforsaken table-based layout with modern CSS, looked at the workflow and usability of people setting up their average site, and consider how to make it easy for folk to style their site without a graphic design degree – well, it might have been a loss. But not as big a loss as today. I guess these ideas never occurred to News Limited management.
I think you overestimate the competence of the news industry, Ethical.
I doubt if Mark Scott has much more of a clue than the other media moguls, just that he doesn’t have to rely on advertising to survive.
I know that there are good programs on the ABC, and people always bring up Radio National (tried listening to Fran Kelly lately?) and I quite like News Radio and 702 sometimes, but I am saying that we need to re-think the point of the ABC, it’s role as a public broadcaster.
If it’s for relatively minority interest radio, then fine, fund that adequately and sell the rest off. There’s is simply no reason for its existence if it is a little more than a less extreme version of commercial media, as it is increasingly becoming.
Scott is the Foghorn Leghorn of media execs. He has never made a significant contribution as a writer or editor or program maker. He was a fixer for Hilmer, who surrounded himself with people willing to paper over. He is the opposite of an innovator.And he is almost certainly positioning himself for a run as a Liberal MP.
Adrian the value of abc local radio outside of cities during disasters is priceless. Its beyond economic assessment really. Its presence generally is a part of peoples lives, and they rely on it especially in disasters, even if its just a place to express their fear and worry. Like it did in melbourne on Feb 7.
But in the context of a changed media landscape … television isn’t going to go away until everyone in “gen x” is reaching retirement age. We grew up with it and I don’t think we’ll abandon it. In that context I think there will always be a role for the abc, but it could do with some serious reassessment. The abc has been screwed over for years and no proper assessment of its actual performance can be made without taking that into account.
If the situation ever evolves to the point that the abc is the only major braodcaster in the country then we’d need to have a serious look at whether it should be there. But by then it’ll be an obsolete medium.
well put Ted @ 27. I used to think it was quite ironic that businessman Mark Scott was out there championing the ABC cause but these days I am more worried that his cultural assault on the unspoken values of the old ABC has been given a green light by Labor as well as the Libs. Where’s the staff board rep Mr Conroy? And what about the ongoing centralisation of news production, distribution and decision making within fortress Ultimo? You have to hand it to Scott he has managed to extend the outsourcing of the ABC to heights undreamed of by anyone in the commercial media. And part of the process is to co-opt potential critics in the blogsphere as New-Media commentators for the ABC.
Here’s my take on his speech and Simons response.
for what its worth, and without wishing to offend or belittle i fail to see how all of this is even remotely important or relevant to anything at all…
imho since the late 1980s australian media is the national equivalent of “cat stuck up tree” done as lift out advertorial….the battle, such as it was, was lost then, everyone’s flogging the proverbial….i live in brisbane..there is no journalism here…no press, no radio, no tv as I understand it of any kind…..there is just “queensland cat stuck up tree”..
imho if one wants journalism (rather than opinion – endless blogs, or reporting – press releases) about australia the last place one would even think of going is a media outlet in australia….
forgive me..you can get back to it now.
I have to laugh every time journalists complain about “the 24 hour news cycle”.
News has always come at times inconvenient to Australian publishing. Ashes Tests that seem to be going predictably and then have a thrilling final session are misreported by newspapers. A press release issued at 4pm on a Friday (or at a time when the journosphere is flocking elsewhere) is never reported. A government can have its ministers refuse to give interviews, and not issue press releases – and does the journosphere find other means to get its info? No, it complains that the government has “gone to ground” and starts writing about the opposition.
Mark Scott might understand that, but he’s not doing much about it.
Durutti: it’s possible that Scott was so certain that the sorts of ideas you were advancing would go absolutely nowhere with Hilmer et al that at the time he could only shrug them off.