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:

Indeed, if the ABC really wanted to honour its charter and address market failures, it would seek not to provide the kind of shallow continuous coverage that, intermittent, “event” stories aside, characterises 24-hour news services and freely available online alternatives.

Instead, they’d be going for that more elusive quality in the contemporary information landscape: depth. By renewing the investigative remit of 4 Corners in order that it might pursue a greater number of important, complex national stories, the ABC would be providing something that simply doesn’t exist elsewhere — and which Australian democracy urgently needs.

And if Kerry O’Brien had the support of an investigative team, he might be able to confront politicians with new information and curly questions, instead of leading all comers through the same, tired pas de deux. If additional resources were provided to local radio, collapsing local public spheres might be revivified. A continuous news service will not address these entrenched difficulties, which are problems for Australia’s democracy as much as they are for the ABC.

True thought leadership from Mr Scott might recognise that what’s lacking in Australia’s public sphere is not another source of basic news coverage, but a commitment to providing new information, context, synthesis, analysis, and tough questions. More information on the new channel will reveal the extent of his awareness of these problems.

Simons then looks at the cult(ure) of personality attached to high profile journos, and questions whether non-witty, non-pretty, non-Tweeting writers are perhaps missing out in a new age of “audience engagement”. She also worries about objectivity, which is another distinction which is hard to maintain.

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].

This is what an anonymous writer in Crikey‘s tips and rumours section had to say yesterday:

Notwithstanding the important role played by ex-Crikey editor Jonathan Green, the ABC’s new journos’ play pen The Drum is a lacklustre affair, which seems to be based on the assumption that anyone who can talk can write and vice versa, thus newspaper writers have become broadcasters and broadcasters are writing columns and opinion pieces. Is this the new journalism?

Annabel Crabb, who earned something of a reputation as a perky sketch writer for Fairfax, is now making regular appearances on ABC local radio shows to update listeners on “what’s going on in Canberra”. Clearly nobody thought to give her a few tips on how to be a broadcaster, so her Q&As with such luminaries as Steve Cannane and Richard Glover have been peppered with elongated “ums” and “ahs” and other irritating hesitations to the point where she sounds as dull as the ever-grey Michelle Grattan on Radio National Breakfast show.

It’s sad, but one wonders why those who dreamed up The Drum really thought that ABC online users would want to read the writings of “top” broadcasters such as Tony Eastley, Leigh Sales, Jonathan Holmes, Mark Colvin (probably one of the few who can write) et al. It’s a sort of media junkies’ dump bin that assumes we all want to read what these people have to say — and most of that is about “the future of journalism” — although it seems to be a generation of has-beens trying to prove they are with it.

Time for a generational change, but the ABC has not invested much in training young talent in the arts of writing or broadcasting, so the online venture will remain frumpish and dull. The only place where the real money is going is to is the cutesy Kids TV channel expensively promoted as a funky lolly show with sparky young teeny presenters doing that jump-and-grin thing that was all the go when the Dave Clark Five were trying to oust the Beatles.

There was a time when the ABC was ahead, but as each new CEO takes over, they behave as if talking up the future and associating the brand with “new technology” as if the ABC really understood it.

Whether or not you agree with this critique (and I just post, not endorse, unless noted otherwise), there are a couple of real issues here.

I was also thinking about Chris Uhlmann’s dire performance as the summer host of the 7 30 report. I tend to think of Uhlmann as a bit of a shill for the News Limited commentariat line du jour, and as one of those journos who believes that it’s appropriate to adopt a post of ‘above the fray’ irony and cynicism. His predecessor as the 7 30 Report’s political editor, Michael Brissenden, was much the same. But, whether you agree with that or not, I think it’s reasonably uncontroversial to say that as someone trained in the craft of a radio reporter, he doesn’t really do tv interviewing very well. So, while it’s highly fashionable at all levels in ABC news and current affairs to suggest that journos have to be able to cross various media, I don’t think it’s as easily said or done.

Secondly, we can circle back to the point about journalist as celebrity that Simons made. While various ABC types might have more followers on Twitter than the average Joelle or Joe, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the most authoritative analysts around.

There are some real questions for the ABC to ponder, I’d suggest, which need a much deeper, well, analysis, than Mark Scott’s techno-cheersquad provides.

Go read, as they say.

He also pings the blurring of the opinion/analysis distinction at the ABC, where Bolt seems to wear two hats – as some sort of putative student of climate science and as ballast for the famous right wing balance.

Which begs the question – if Bolt is so easily fooled, why does the ABC or any media outfit attempting to be informative use him? Tabloids I can understand – they’re rubbish from arsehole to breakfast time in the serious debate stakes, it’s entertainment not serious news and analysis. But the ABC?

It’s not only a sad indictment on what passes for quality debate on public affairs in the MSM in Australia, but it’s also a massive slap in the face to the intelligent conservatives and those from the intellectual right who end up having their political views represented in the public sphere by what amounts to a form of mediocrity. A result, mind you, that was always going to be inevitable when the pursuit of “political balance” on these programs transformed into a lazy affirmative action program for pundits with conservative leanings.

Conservatives and those on the right deserve better from our flagship current affairs programs – it’s not like we have a shortage of professionally skilled, media friendly folks from the right. A quick look through the halls of the IPA and CIS demonstrates that pretty clearly.

It’s edited by Jonathan Green, formerly of Crikey, to whom congratulations are due, as they are to Sophie Black who’s had a very well deserved promotion to the top gig at that thing on the internet.

Margaret Simons, writing at her Content Makers blog, discusses two inter-related aspects of this ABC initiative. She first riffs on a piece by Media Watch’s Jonathan Holmes, which questions the distinction between analysis and opinion, which apparently grounds the ABC’s dictates to its own journos (“analysis good, opinion bad”). Simons then looks at the cult(ure) of personality attached to high profile journos, and questions whether non-witty, non-pretty, non-Tweeting writers are perhaps missing out in a new age of “audience engagement”. She also worries about objectivity, which is another distinction which is hard to maintain.

All these are worthy points for discussion, though I’d also be interested in what people think of the quality of the writing and analysis to date. I’ve already noted some Crikey writers, such as Greg Barns, who may have come across with Green, featured (though Barns does have a tendency to pop up in a lot of places). Whether the ABC should cast its remit rather wider is another issue – which, of course, circles back to the glam/Twitter/name issue…

My own view is that it’s harder than some might assume to find good writers with different takes. It might well be that identifying, developing and mentoring such new voices would be a most valuable contribution. But that’s almost a full time publishing/editorial gig in itself, and it may be incompatible with the ABC’s desire to have an immediate impact. We shall see.

It might also be something we could make a small contribution to here…

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.

Only 10 songs on the hottest 100 list were made by a band who had any women in it, ever (if we include Massive Attack, who, technically, only ever had female guest vocalists); the highest of these was placed at no. 20 (The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”). The only two songs with female lead vocals are the two by Massive Attack. Finally, no solo female artists at all made the list.

John Gunders has some speculations as to why this happened at The Memes of Production:

the absence of women from recent, mainstream rock music is troubling. I want to argue that there are two, interconnected reasons: the first has to do the masculinist nature of the “rock myth”, and the second is the increasing commercialisation of what we used to call “alternative music”.

There’s a third factor. As Mel Campbell argues at The Enthusiast, these sort of lists form part of a self-reinforcing cycle which diminishes the presence of female and women fronted bands on radio playlists.

Bah to JJJ.

Elsewhere: Rosanna Ryan.

Update: Lauredhel at Hoyden on the Hack segment, who also has lots of links in her post to other commentary and discussion.

I was also interested to note that Derek Barry has written a post at Woolly Days on the submission from my QUT Creative Industries Faculty colleagues Terry Flew, Stuart Cunningham, Axel Bruns and Jason Wilson (now at Wollongong Uni). Drawing on some lessons from an ARC Linkage Project on citizen journalism (and folks might recall the YouDecide2007 site which was a centrepiece of the research), they argue that public broadcasting needs to be reframed as public service media.

Derek Barry sums up the submission in more depth, but the key idea is that social innovation is now more likely to arise at the margins than from centralised planning. Flew et al contend that the ABC and SBS could enhance the performance of their Charter goals through leveraging user-generated content. This direction would involve reconceptualising the traditional educational and citizenship functions of public broadcasting universality as an opportunity for citizens to negotiate that civic capacity with others via a universally accessible platform.

Most of the submission goes to the news and current affairs roles of the ABC and SBS, but there may also be implications for other areas of the corporations’ activities.

Disclosure: I was also involved in working on the ARC Project which has fed into this submission.

Update: Terry Flew posts about the submission on his blog.

Update: Margaret Simons has a long article on the review at Inside Story.

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.

The questions facing mankind are, essentially, the same as they have always been: the age-old questions about what is good, true and beautiful. How do we identify those characteristics in our own and others’ behaviour? How do we achieve them in our lives?

Inevitably, we will never answer them validly if – confusing the medium with the message, to put it in Marshall McLuhan’s discredited formula – we confuse the garments for the person, the cover for the book.

Apparently, the ABC’s remit is to pose (or answer?) eternal questions, and any management decision about Radio National demonstrates “relativism” and that “they hate religion”.

I’m actually not a huge fan of Stephen Crittenden’s, but there can be no doubt that discussing programming decisions in this fashion is, well, just demented. The ABC’s decision making is driven by twin (and overlapping) logics – the decline in funding for content created inhouse by specialists, and an attempt to be a leader in interactive content. It has nothing much to do with “relativism” and “postmodernism” except in the fevered imaginings of crazed columnists. There are legitimate questions to ask about all this – but the culture wars frame makes it literally impossible to debate them sensibly. A lot is changing in public broadcasting in this country, and we really haven’t begun to discuss it because the overhang of the culture wars mindset seems to persist. Probably this sort of craziness is best ignored, and its hyperbolic nature itself a sign that its time is past, but it’s worth noting if only to call for a much better informed and contemporary discussion on public broadcasting.

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:

Mr Ric Smith AO PSM has been appointed to chair the Nomination Panel for a period of three years. Mr Smith was Secretary of the Department of Defence from 2002 to 2006 and had previously served as Australia’s Ambassador to Indonesia and to the People’s Republic of China.

Professor Allan Fels AO has been appointed as a member for a period of three years. Professor Fels is currently Dean of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government. He was Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission from 1995 until 30 June 2003.

Ms Leneen Forde AC has been appointed as a member for a period of two years. Ms Forde has been Chancellor of Griffith University since 2000 and was Governor of Queensland from 1992 to 1997.

Mr David Gonski AC has been appointed as a member for a period of two years. Mr Gonski has been Chancellor of the University of New South Wales since 2005 and is chairman and director of a number of major companies. He was Chairman of the Australia Council from 2002 to 2005.

Stephen Conroy has also announced that the position of staff elected Director will be restored to the ABC Board.

Concurrently with this process, there’s also a discussion paper on the future of the two public broadcasters – available here. When I have a little more time, I’ll take a look at it and write something. In the meantime, it’s very good to see a merit based process for board appointments put in place.