There’s been some discussion on the ABC’s decision to introduce a 24 hour news channel on a related thread, and it deserves consideration in its own right.
Mark Scott’s announcement was accompanied by the now ritualised shots across the bow from News Limited columnists. As Margaret Simons observes:
…it is another example of how one of the chief battles of the media decade will be between public broadcasters and commercial viewer-pays services.
Indeed. But it also raises the question of whether the ABC’s limited resources should be targeted towards jumping into the same space already occupied by Sky News. Mark Scott’s strategy for the ABC, when you substract some of the bells and whistles about ‘user generated content’, is increasingly looking like turning the ABC into a major competitor in a range of news and public affairs spaces.
The temptation in these debates is to default to a simplistic response, something along the lines of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. But profound shifts in the public broadcasting landscape require a more nuanced evaluation. As Simons herself notes, the question of the ABC Charter will be raised, not least by commercial vested interests.
However, as Jason Wilson argues at New Matilda:
…as news consumers and taxpayers, we’re entitled to pause for a moment and wonder whether it actually makes sense for us.
Go read the rest of Wilson’s piece.
His conclusion: Continue reading ‘ABC News 24/7′
I’m not sure if it’s in the BBC’s charter, but the venerable public broadcaster is allegedly trying to reach out to people with disabilities, and to increase social awareness of disability issues. Through such charming initiatives as their online Paris Hilton like trash celeb persona – 
The ABC of Drumming up some online
opinionanalysisWhen the ABC’s Drum was launched, Margaret Simons cited a piece by Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes on internal discussions of ABC journos writing opinion pieces, which I referred to in this post:
I was thinking about this again yesterday, prompted partly by the renewed criticism of the right wing balancing act on the ABC, and partly by a snippet from a Crikey reader (more of that later). Annabel Crabb also popped up to discuss her practice as a ‘political sketch writer’ [deconstructed here by Andrew Elder]. Continue reading ‘The ABC of Drumming up some online
opinionanalysis’