Tag Archive for 'abc board'

Mark Scott and the future of Australian media

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Mark
11 months, 1 week ago
in Film, TV, Video etc, Media, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 13 Comments

The ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, has proved a much more interesting pick than many anticipated at the time of his appointment. Over at Woolly Days, Derek Barry summarises a speech Scott made in giving the Latrobe University annual media studies lecture last week [full text in pdf here]. Scott gives the best read I’ve seen from a senior media figure on the impact of the “digital revolution” on the Antipodean news biz. Importantly, he pings flawed business decisions as a key cause of the decline of traditional media – something which is absent from a lot of the ‘future of journalism’ discussions which tend to assume that media orgs are being buffeted by inexorable winds not of their own making. And if Scott is right, those winds are going to wreak havoc – he predicts the disappearance of The Age and the SMH within a decade.

It isn’t noted often enough that the most innovative players in the Australian media scene are the public broadcasters – the ABC and SBS. While I think both still have some way to go in taking full advantage of the current potential of the web and mobile digital media, they’re streets ahead of the commercial competition – a fact which in itself should cause many to rethink some lazy assumptions about the nature of innovation. With the appointment of Griffith REVIEW’s Julianne Schultz to the ABC Board, it’ll be intriguing to see how some expertise at board level plays into the reconfiguration of public broadcasting – Schultz was intimately involved as an ABC executive with the first round of planning for ABC Online which hit a brick wall in the disastrous Jonathan Shier regime.

New appointments to the ABC Board

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Kim
11 months, 3 weeks ago
in Media and Politics
. 113 Comments

Some very good news – the Rudd government has appointed two members to the ABC board who actually know something about public broadcasting and culture.

Former Opera House boss Michael Lynch, who was praised by the Queen for transforming London’s controversial South Bank arts centre, and the academic, author and former ABC executive Julianne Schultz, will become directors for the next five years.

This is pleasing too:

Mr Lynch said he had no time for accusations against the ABC of left-wing bias.

“I don’t believe that view — and I don’t see the role of the board is to be sitting there as lord high inquisitor on the politics of the individuals or the organisation,” he said from London.

“I think the organisation needs to be made, and I think these appointments will probably make the organisation, feel more secure — that every decision or every announcement by an ABC journalist or a part of the organisation is not getting itself into unending scrutiny from the board.”

ABC and SBS boards selection panel announced

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Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Film, TV, Video etc, Media and Politics
. 16 Comments

There’s been a fair bit of discussion around here from time to time about the Rudd government’s proposals for ensuring merit based appointments to the boards of ABC and SBS, a matter of quite a deal of interest because of John Howard’s habit of appointing the most ludicrously provocative culture warriors possible. Even from the point of view of the right’s own pseudo-Gramscian (counter) march through the institutions thing, these appointments were completely counterproductive – the lack of any broadcasting experience on the part of the appointees negated their ability to scrutinise or shape management proposals. Howard, I suspect, was playing something of a double game, appointing chairs such as Donald McDonald and Maurice Newman on one hand and keeping up the “balance” pressure with appointments such as those of Ron Brunton, Janet Albrechtsen and Keith Windschuttle. The resulting ire also helped maintain Howard’s cred with the culture wars commentariat.

Labor promised last year to eschew political appointments, and introduce a selection panel at arms length from the Communications Minister. The final appointment would still be ministerial, but any appointment not recommended by the panel would have to be justified and the justification tabled in parliament. The procedure is outlined here. Ex pollies and senior political advisors are banned from appointment.

There are now two vacancies on the boards of both ABC and SBS, and the panel has been announced (note that it hasn’t been appointed by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy but by PMC Secretary Terry Moran). By the way, you’re reading about this first on LP – it hasn’t been picked up in the media yet. The panel is: Continue reading ‘ABC and SBS boards selection panel announced’